Fiona McLeod | |
|---|---|
 Fiona McLeod in 2016 | |
| Born | 1964 (age 57–58) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne (BA, LLB, MPub&IntLaw) |
| Occupation | Barrister |
| Years active | 1991–present |
Fiona Margaret McLeod AO , SC (born 1964) is an Australian barrister practising at the Victorian Bar.
McLeod's father was a psychiatrist, who presided over the department at the University of Auckland for seven years, until McLeod was 13 years old. Her mother was a biochemist, later a ceramic artist. [1]
McLeod attended the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, where she enjoyed participating in student theatre productions. She earned a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws there, and later Masters of Public and International Law. [1]
McLeod was President of the Australian Law Students' Association in 1987, [2] winning the Butterworths prize for Civil Jurisprudence in the same year. [1]
McLeod was employed as an articled clerk and solicitor by the law firm Cornwall Stodart in Melbourne. She was admitted as a barrister in Victoria in 1991 and started practising at Owen Dixon Chambers. She was appointed Senior Counsel in Victoria in 2003. [1]
In 2013, McLeod was appointed chair of the Victorian Bar Council, [1] and in 2015 was the president of the Australian Bar Association. [2] She was appointed to the executive of the Law Council of Australia in 2014, serving as treasurer in 2015, president-elect in 2016 [1] and President in 2017.
McLeod attended the 2020 Summit participating in the Regional Security and Prosperity stream. At the time she was the President of Australian Women Lawyers.[ citation needed ]
She is a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and the Australian Academy of Law. She is a Council member of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, the Advisory Council of the University of Melbourne Law School and the Victorian University Sir Zelman Cowan Centre. [2]
She has represented the Commonwealth in major cases, including the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, Queensland Floods Commission and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. [2]
On 22 March 2019 McLeod replaced Josh Spiegel as the Labor candidate for the seat of Higgins in the 2019 federal election. The change was made from central party leadership who wanted a higher profile candidate, because of reports that the formerly safe Liberal seat was winnable. [3] At that election, she came closer to taking the seat off the Liberals than any Labor candidate had come before. She managed a swing of six percent to Labor, enough to make this longstanding blue-ribbon Liberal seat marginal against Labor for the first time. [4]
On 15 January 2020, it was announced that McLeod would be one of the members of the National Co-design Group of the Indigenous voice to government. [5]
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