Matthew Rouse
Matthew is the founder of the firm and leads the corporate and commercial team. He developed his expertise as a commercial lawyer with some of Australia's largest law firms, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property and franchising. Matthew is trusted by his clients to deliver astute and practical advice and to ensure that the Rouse Lawyers team deliver on their promise to offer top tier legal advice, promptly, and with the clients interests, and value, in mind.
Peter Rouse
Peter is a commercially astute and practical lawyer specialising in franchising and leasing. Peter has an outstanding attention to detail and is committed to ensuring that his clients receive a complete and effective service. As Team Leader of Franchising and Leasing, Peter’s depth of experience and knowledge allows him to respond to his client’s commercial imperatives.
Luke McKavanagh
Luke is a skilled Commercial lawyer who specialises in franchising and business law. He provides comprehensive advice on a wide variety of legal issues that arise in operating small to medium businesses. Luke places a heavy emphasis on maintaining the franchisor/franchisee relationship.
Domenic Festa
With his experience in both accounting and taxation law, Domenic's passion is identifying suitable structures for clients to achieve their commercial objectives. The majority of Domenic's work has involved consulting to accountants, lawyers and financial professionals on tax, superannuation and structuring issues affecting their clients.
Eloise Pawley
Eloise is a strong commercial litigator focused on developing strategies which achieve optimal outcomes for our clients. She is a dedicated and integral member of the Commercial Litigation and Corporate & Commercial teams at Rouse Lawyers, ensuring that our representation is cost effective, efficient and responsive to our clients’ commercial focus.
Justine Ansell
Justine is an employment lawyer with over 20 years’ experience. Justine works closely with clients to manage the risks related to what is generally one of the biggest costs and assets of a business, its people. Justine works to know and understand a client’s business, to provide workplace strategies and solutions on a wide range of matters in employment, industrial relations, safety and compliance.
Andrew Cvetkovic
Andrew leads our property team, with over 15 years’ experience in a wide range of property and commercial transactions. Andrew acts for a variety of clients including large and small property developers, commercial property owners, shopping centre, commercial office and industrial landlords and tenants. He has a very commercial and practical approach to achieving outcomes for clients which has been gained from years of exposure to a wide range of commercial matters acting for large corporate, medium sized and smaller commercial clients.
Sonja van der Steen
Sonja is a lawyer in the corporate and commercial team with experience in providing advice on business transactions, legal issues and compliance. She has gained corporate and commercial experience in a large national firm and through in-house counsel roles. Merging commercial legal firm and in-house experience Sonja seeks to identify practical solutions to help realise her client’s commercial objectives. Sonja’s previous career as an international flight attendant gives her a client focused approach.
Michael Barber
Michael has a multi-disciplinary approach and qualifications extend his capacity to service his clients by bridging the gap between business, technology and law.
