Victoria’s top ranked compensation lawyers revealed
Victorian lawyers have dominated national compensation law rankings, with 30 practitioners recognised across five categories in the prestigious Doyle's Guide.
Victoria has reinforced its reputation as a leading legal hub, with a number of its practitioners recognised in the country’s definitive guide to top lawyers.
Doyle’s Guide highlights top lawyers and law firms in major practice areas using peer reviews, client feedback, and independent research.
Rankings are voluntary and reflect professional skill and reputation, not any form of regulatory accreditation.
There were 30 Victorians recognised out of more than 130 lawyers across Australia for the five compensation categories in the annual guide.
Nationally Victoria came second, just behind Sydney on 37, and ahead of Brisbane on 25.
Among practice areas, work injury solicitors led the field with 9 recognised, followed by 7 in public liability, 6 in motor vehicle accidents, and 4 in both medical injury and asbestos and dust disease.
Victoria Keays, of Gordon Legal, was nominated as pre-eminent in asbestos and dust diseases compensation after more than 17 years experience.
Ms Keays said in the last few years, the face of her clients had really changed.
“We are seeing people with much smaller exposures to asbestos. Often women who’ve been around while home renovation is going on, and then they’ve been unlucky enough to be exposed, often washing the clothes, sweeping up, doing those sorts of things,” she said.
“Sadly, even small exposures to asbestos can cause mesothelioma.
“People assume this is a problem from years gone by. And the truth is, there is still a lot of asbestos around.
“It was so frequently used. Australia was one of the highest per capita users of asbestos because we could mine it locally. It was cheap. It was something that we used a lot after World War II.
“So unfortunately, we now have one of the highest instances of asbestos-related disease.”
There has also been a “wave” of people getting ill from working with silica, she said.
“There’s been a fair bit of media coverage and a whole lot of advocacy about silicosis and the wave of young stonemasons who have been diagnosed with silicosis following working with reconstituted stone,” she said.
“I’d never had a silicosis case in the early years of my career. But that has certainly become a big feature in the last five or so years.”
Bree Knoester, founder of Brave Legal and one of Australia’s leading personal injury lawyers with more than 20 years of experience as both a barrister and solicitor, was nominated for pre-eminent in work injuries.
“I grew up in regional Victoria where there’s a lot of unemployment and a lot of people who had been injured at work,” she said.
“I lived near the power stations where asbestos was a big problem and resulted in thousands of workers being injured and so I always wanted to work in an area that helped restore the lives of those who had been injured at work.”
Ms Knoester said the company now handles a significant amount of cases involving workplace fatalities.
“That takes us through from appearing for a family in a coronial inquest to representing a family in an Occupational Health and Safety prosecution to looking at their work cover entitlements,” she said.
“That’s a big focus of our work now because it requires our lawyers to have expertise in a number of different jurisdictions and courts.
“Workplace deaths are awful situations and no one should wake up and not come home after work.”
She said the Work Cover system in Victoria was incredibly difficult to navigate for workers.
“We often see workers become more psychologically unwell because they are having to battle the Work Cover system,” she said.
“Our firm offers free counselling to those workers because there just is insufficient support for people who are both injured and then really trying to advocate for themselves and their work cover entitlements.”
Clara Davies of Burt & Davies, who was crowned pre-eminent in the motor vehicle accident category, founded her firm 22 years ago which uniquely focuses on compensation claims in that field.
“The key is getting to know your client exceptionally well, because regardless of what the law states, knowing the facts and knowing the individual circumstances of your clients is what can make or break a case,” she said.
“Most of my clients are quite severely injured and have disruption to their employment which puts a financial burden on their family.
“Some do manage to get back to work but not necessarily in the same capacity that they were working beforehand, but many don’t manage to get back to meaningful employment.
“I often say to clients, the idea of compensation is that it’s meant to restore them back to the position they were in before they suffered their injuries but I think the reality is that no amount of money, no compensation really achieves that purpose.
“But at least if you can provide a client with some financial security in terms of what the future might hold for them that can be a really meaningful thing for them and if I can play a role in that, that makes it meaningful work for me.”
Maurice Blackburn’s Tom Ballantyne was recognised as pre-eminent in medical negligence.
He said the sector was a “niche but complicated and fascinating area of litigation” that continued to evolve as resourcing, technology and patient expectations changed.
“It requires lawyers to be part lawyer, part doctor and part counsellor, dealing with high stakes litigation, technically complex medicine, and often traumatised clients,” he said.
He said the firm was successfully settling hundreds of cases per year in claims arising from almost every type of medical treatment, including matters involving catastrophic injuries and deaths.
Publisher of Doyle’s Guide, Cam Thomson, said the Victorian Bar continued to be incredibly talented and “remarkably well priced” in comparison to other states.
“When compared to the Bar in other states Victoria tends to be good value,” he said.
“Sydney obviously tends to be the most expensive but often Victorian counsel are cheaper or the same price as Queensland and Western Australia counsel and, on objective terms, there’s a strong argument that on average they have a deeper talent pool.”
He said in particular the junior bar has had a crop of excellent new talent enter its ranks this year and in recent years, with busy areas in Family, Crime, Litigation and Administrative Law.
“Victoria’s excellent crop of “next level”, mid tier or specialist firms have probably seen the market not quite experience the chasm between the global elite firms and the “rest” in terms of work quality that the likes of Sydney, Brisbane and Perth have,” he said.
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