business and corporate activity in Australia.
The request was supported by 29 prominent lawyers from professional practice and academia.
In November 1980 the Executive of the Law Council of Australia approved the formation of the BLS. Graeme was its fi rst Chair.
In 1981, Graeme moved from the law to merchant banking at Hill Samuel Australia Ltd/Macquarie Bank and handed over the reins of the BLS. He remained closely involved in the ongoing work of the Section albeit as a lawyer turned investment banker, and subsequently as Competition Commission Chairman.
Roger Featherston
Roger has over 30 years involvement with the BLS in many ways. He:
• joined the BLS and the then Trade Practices Committee in 1981;
• lead the fi rst Trade Practices/ Competition and Consumer workshop under the auspices of the BLS;
• was deputy chair of the Trade Practices Committee in 1989 and 1990;
• was the chair of that Committee in 1991 and 1992;
• was a long standing member of the BLS Executive including its Chair between 1997 and 1999;
• did the heavy lifting that led to the establishment of the links between the BLS and the IBA; and
• was the convenor of the Australian Business Law Workshop/Rising Stars Workshop since the beginning in 2000 and all ten (including this year’s) since 2000.
Roger’s role and commitment to the BLS has seen him involved in both the ordinary work of the Section and the nurturing and development of younger lawyers who have been integral to the ongoing renewal needed, fi rst, for sustainability of the section and, second, its growth over a long period.
FAMILY LAW SECTION
Crisis creates opportunity and who better to respond in a crisis than Australian family lawyers.
In 2011, the Family Court of Western Australia was in crisis, with over 950 property matters in the defended list taking up to two years to reach trial. Enter a group of senior family lawyers, or in particular, senior members of AIFLAM1
, the Australian Institute of
Family Law Arbitrators and Mediators. AIFLAM responded by recognising the opportunity to re-invigorate the family law ADR environment that the family law profession had embraced early on in the ADR movement.2
The AIFLAM team, headed by Chair, Mr Andrew Davies, and accompanied by senior members of the profession, the judiciary and academia worked together to create a pilot program of outsourced conciliation conferences, named mediation-style conferences. The program sought to respond to the crisis while at the same time introduce some new theory and new thinking into the traditional ‘conciliation’ or ‘mediation’ conference format. Hence, the team used the name Mediation- style Conference in recognition that the Conferences seemed to straddle both a conciliation and mediation type of process. The team also introduced a research regime to evaluate the program and to add data to the ADR research bank. Essentially, the team worked to fi nd an opportunity for change in the current crisis aff ecting the family law environment.
(left–right): Roger Featherston, Professor Bob Baxt, Graeme Samuel AC at the presentation of their Honorary Membership to the Business Law Section.
AIFLAM had been watching with interest the development of outsourced conferencing through the initiative of the Federal Magistrates Court in Brisbane. This initiative involved the Court working with the parties and their solicitors in exploring mediation at an early stage of the proceedings as a means to try and resolve fi nancial matters or at least narrow the scope of the dispute. The support of the Courts by the profession in Brisbane was an important part of the procedure and refl ected the
59
MAR–MAY 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64