Law firms in Australia are expecting another strong year in 2020 thanks to record spending on public projects and increasingly aggressive regulators.

Lawyers Down Under also are expecting an active M&A market and more work in the energy sector.

All this follows on a strong 2019. The Australian firm Clayton Utz earned a record A$516 million (US$353 million) last year, and outgoing managing partner Rob Cutler expects "a modest increase" in 2020.

More active regulators will be a key factor in driving work, he said.

Regulatory authorities, including the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, anti-money laundering agency AUSTRAC and the Australian Taxation Office, are becoming increasingly aggressive in the wake of the 2018 Royal Commission into misconduct by banks and other financial institutions, he said.

"There continues to be a strong focus, whether it be in the financial services sector or other sectors, on an assessment of market-facing behavior and remediating that if there are any shortfalls," he said. 

"Regulators are pushing the envelope," he added. "They are being aggressive around their investigations."

Cutler said it is quite possible that criminal prosecutions will arise from the banking Royal Commission, which found widespread misconduct. "That will fuel activity for firms such as ours —defending individuals and corporations if any of those charges come to be," he said.

Another driver of work is the low Australian dollar, which has made local assets cheaper in U.S. dollar terms. The local currency has fallen from above 81 cents at the start of 2018 to under 70 cents today.

Capital coming from Asia, Europe and the United States is flowing into the country, and "we're seeing a significant amount of activity off the back of that inbound capital," Cutler said.

Funds from Asia, Europe and particularly the U.S. are going into such sectors as infrastructure, agribusiness, and health care, he said.

In the 12 months ended last September, there were 47 separate M&A deals in Australia, up from 40 the year before. However, the average deal size dropped to A$522 million (US$357 million)—about half the size of the previous year, according to a report by Australian firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth. The firm expects foreign interests, excluding China, will remain strong and that private equity and local pension funds will be more active.

Baker McKenzie also said it expects the number of M&A deals to increase in Australia, although it said the total deal value will drop.

"In line with our own commissioned economic forecasts, we see increasing trade frictions affecting Australia's main export markets in the near term, total M&A declining to around $50 billion in 2020, followed by a pickup in 2021-22, when rising stock valuations create more favorable conditions," said Baker McKenzie's Australian national managing partner, Anthony Foley.

"We are certainly seeing a trend in Japanese investment flows with increasing work for our Australian offices from Japanese clients seeking Australian buying opportunities," Foley said. "Likewise, the growth in renewables is driving strong demand for our services—from large-scale solar and wind to pumped hydro."

U.K.-based Pinsent Masons, which entered the Australian market in 2015, expects strong growth in infrastructure, which along with energy makes up its core practice area in Australia.

Governments on Australia's east coast are investing in road and rail to accommodate growing city populations. Forecaster Deloitte Access Economics expects major project activity to reach a peak of around A$22 billion (US$15 billion) in 2022, according to a report released in the second half of last year.

The total recorded value of definite projects—those under construction or committed to—sits at A$288 billion (US$197 billion), while another A$426 billion (US$291 billion) worth is under consideration or possible, according to the firm's Investment Monitor report.

"We've gone pretty long on major projects and infrastructure," said Jeremy King, head of finance and projects at Pinsent Masons in Australia. "The eastern seaboard of Australia in terms of [public-private partnership] transactions is enormously busy."

The firm is expecting a significant increase in front-end work as contracts are negotiated and agreed on, and in back-end work as the projects move into the delivery phase and disputes arise.

Projects are larger and more complex than they were previously, the amount of risk has increased and there are increasing cost pressures—all of which increase the scope for disputes, said James Morgan-Payler, a finance and projects partner at the firm.

"All of those factors coming into play will result in this being a very busy year for delivery lawyers and for litigation lawyers in that infrastructure space over the next 12 months or so—probably the next two years," he said.

Pinsent Mason's revenue in 2019 was "significantly higher" than the year before, as the firm took on additional front-end projects and lawyers in Sydney and oil and gas lawyers in Perth. It plans to add a real estate practice in 2020 to complement the projects practice.

A pickup in the natural resources sector in Western Australia and augmentation of energy transmission networks will boost project work.

But in the meantime, Australia's constrained electricity networks could slow down the pace of wind and solar projects that come to market because of the risk they won't be able to connect to the electricity grid, Morgan-Payler said.

Like other firms, Ashurst is expecting to see a large amount of work in the infrastructure, energy and financial services sectors. Last year was a strong one for the firm and performance was in line with the record 2018 year, when the firm's billings were boosted by its representation of ANZ bank at the Financial Services Royal Commission, said Anita Cade, managing partner of Ashurst's Sydney office.

However, the market for legal services will remain extremely competitive, she said. "Clients are under increasingly challenging environments. They're looking for ways to increase efficiencies in what they're doing. They're looking for innovation. They're looking for teams who can partner with them and help them check what they're doing, help them close deals, help them solve problems," she said.