Beyond the Contract

Could you outline the journey that led you to your current role?  

I started my legal career at Arnold Bloch Leibler as an articled clerk, but my professional journey has taken a number of interesting twists and turns that ultimately led me back to ABL seven years ago.  

After working for a larger law firm for a time, I took a role in the legal and government relations area of the Grand Prix Corporation. This position involved advising on everything from tobacco exemptions and road closures to managing issues around the Albert Park protests at the time. It was a full-on role, constantly juggling hot potatoes. I also spent some years working for a private developer and a tech start-up. While my children were little, to keep my finger on the pulse, I operated as a sole practitioner doing residential conveyancing. 

What brought you back to Arnold Bloch Leibler? 

ABL always felt like home and absolutely the right place to apply all the varied learnings and professional networks I’d acquired. What really sets ABL apart is the quality of the clients, the diversity of the day-to-day work, and the commerciality and creativity the firm offers to all sorts of people doing all sorts of interesting and unusual things in property.  

As a Special Counsel in Property and Development, how do you stay ahead of evolving regulations to provide your clients with the most up-to-date advice?   

Technical excellence is a given for all our lawyers, and from the moment we arrive as clerks, we are trained to meet the very high expectations of our clients. But keeping up to date with changes in black letter law is the bare minimum – as property and development lawyers advising very sophisticated clients, we need to be able to come up with creative ways to meet their needs within changing legal parameters. This is especially so in the face of so many changes affecting residential property in Victoria, from land tax to stamp duty changes and finance pressures.  

Regarding the boutique St James Park Hawthorn off-the-plan development, what were some unique aspects of this project that required specialised legal expertise?  

I’m particularly interested in high-end, off-the-plan, mostly residential boutique developments at the moment, and I advise across the spectrum of clients involved in them. In the case of St James Park, we acted for the vendor, and I’d say the main feature of a project like this is the emotion involved, particularly for buyers. If you’re downsizing from the family home and investing in a new property to see you through the next stage of your life, you are understandably deeply invested in the quality of the product, the time frames, who the other buyers may be, etc. This translated into numerous stand-alone, bespoke requirements from various buyers, and we worked with the developer and the builder to make sure these individual preferences were accommodated. 

There’s often the same level of emotion when I act for buyers and sellers on standalone high-end, high-value properties in Toorak and along the Peninsula, some of which have been in the family for generations. Selling and/or buying these landmark properties is, understandably, a very significant decision, often involving high levels of anxiety.   

Clients often tell me that I'm their counsellor as much as their lawyer. I consider it a compliment because understanding the human side of transactions is just as important as being well-versed in the law. It's a lesson Mark Leibler tells every articled clerk who walks through the door at ABL, and we remember it! 

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