Swinburne Law School

Our strategy for research and teaching is informed by industry. The Law School has an Advisory Board and each degree or course has a Course Advisory Committee comprising of industry experts to inform curriculum development.

External Law Advisory Committee

External members

Julian Burnside AO QC

The Honourable Julian Burnside OA QC practises principally in commercial litigation, trade practices and administrative law. While maintaining a strong commercial practice, Julian has also developed a distinguished public law practice. His landmark cases include successfully appearing for the plaintiff in Trevorrow v. South Australia which was the first case in which a court recognised membership of the Stolen Generation as a basis for legal compensation.

In recent years Julian has become one of Australia's leading advocates in relation to Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and the protection of human rights. He is also an accomplished author. An early and ongoing user of technology in law, Julian is a founding member of the Victorian Society for Computers and Law. 

Terry Healy 

Since 2005 as Special Counsel to CSIRO, Terry Healy has managed CSIRO’s highly successful patent litigation and licensing initiative based on an invention relating to wifi made by CSIRO scientists in 1992–3. The litigation, centred mainly in the Eastern District of Texas in the United States, has led to licences and settlement agreements worth more than $450 million.  

Before that, Terry was CSIRO’s General Counsel for about two decades, in which role he concentrated mainly on corporate governance and litigation. He is admitted to legal practice in Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT and before the High Court of Australia; he is also a Registered Patent Attorney in Australia.  

In his 40-plus-year career with CSIRO, Terry has been involved in a wide variety of legal and policy areas, including through extended secondments to the Parliamentary Office of a Federal Minister for Science, the Independent Inquiry into CSIRO (1978), Shell (Australia), CRA (now Rio Tinto), Freehills and Griffith Hack. 

Dr Gordon Hughes AM

Dr Hughes is a principal lawyer at Davies Collison Cave in the Litigation and Commercialisation practice. Prior to joining the firm in 2016, he was a partner at Ashurst (formerly Blake Dawson). He is an acknowledged expert in the area of intellectual property commercialisation, information technology law, eCommerce, and data protection. In 2017, Dr Hughes was awarded an Order of Australia for significant service to the law, to professional organisations and to international affairs and legal practice in the Asia-Pacific region.

Frank Vincent AO QC 

The Honourable Frank Vincent AO QC is a distinguished retired judge of the Victorian Supreme Court and former Chancellor of Victoria University. In his legal career his focus was on criminal law, appearing in approximately 200 murder trials, a record number. 

Vincent also worked with several Aboriginal legal aid services, particularly during the years 1975 to 1985 when he spent a substantial part of each year in the Northern Territory working with the Aboriginal community. Vincent was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1985 and had been a Judge of the Court of Appeal for nine years at the time of his retirement in 2009. He was Deputy Chair and then Chair of the Victorian Adult Parole Board, a position he occupied for 17 years. 

Vincent has served as a member of the Victorian Law Reform Commission, consultant to the Australian Law Reform Commission and Chairman of the Victorian Criminal Bar Association, and since his retirement has been appointed by successive Attorneys General to conduct a number of inquiries into matters of public importance. 

Mick Sheehy (Chair)

Mick Sheehy has been a PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner since October 2018, responsible for building and running PwC’s Australian NewLaw practice which is focused on providing strategic consulting, technology and outsourcing solutions to legal departments. 

Mick is a recognised international leader in the field of legal innovation and transformation, having won numerous international legal innovation awards and with his work the subject of a case study for Harvard Law School. Mick founded and chaired the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium Australia, an industry body established to share best-practice legal operations and innovation knowledge. 

Tracey Hendy

Tracey Hendy is a Principal and Patent Attorney at FPA Patent Attorneys. Tracey’s professional career encompasses over 30 years of experience in intellectual property law with a broad base of expertise in patents and designs, specialising in the complex mechanical arts and medical devices. Tracey’s focus in medical technologies spans surgical devices, orthopaedics, cardiovascular and endovascular devices, medical diagnostic devices and instruments, microfluidics, diabetes monitoring, additive manufacturing, especially for medical prosthesis, laser eye surgery and robotic surgery.

Karen Finch

Karen Finch is the Founder and CEO of Legally Yours, a Co-Director of Pro Help Legal Australia, the President of the Australian Legal Technology Association (ALTA), the former Committee Chair of the Women of ALTA (WALTA), a Legal Tech Editor for Idea Spies, and a passionate Ambassador of the progressive small law movement in Australia.