Did you know?

Launched in February 2015, Swinburne Law School is the newest, most dynamic and forward-thinking law school in Australia. We are rated fourth in the country and in the top 150 law schools worldwide (Shanghai Ranking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2022).  

We deliver future-focused education, with an emphasis on innovation, practical skills and social responsibility - equipping our students with the industry capabilities of tomorrow. We produce world-class research, with a commitment to developing strong connections with industry, government and the community.

Our degree, our difference

We’re the only law school in Victoria where graduates can apply to practise the day they graduate. Our partnership with the Leo Cussen Centre for Law means that students can complete their Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice, and gain extensive practical experience, all while studying their Bachelor of LawsPlus, we offer our students three professional placements. It’s all part of our commitment to ensuring our students are well equipped to handle whatever tomorrow throws at them.   

Our Criminal Justice and Criminology degree teaches students about the causes of crime (criminology) and how society responds to crime (criminal justice), and provides students with an industry engaged learning experience.

  • Victorian Parliament

    Our law courses and degrees

    Be prepared for the rigorous and intellectually challenging legal profession by studying law at Swinburne. Our teachers are experts in commercial law, intellectual property, internet law and privacy law.

  • Lady Justice symbolic statue with some legal books in background.

    Swinburne Law School Research

    Swinburne Law School aims to transform the legal industry and shape lives and communities through research based on innovation, invention and creativity.

Our people

Name Position Contact Location
Dr Mitchell Adams Course Director, LLB and Senior Lecturer, Law +61 3 9214 5856
mwadams@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE328
Professor Mirko Bagaric Professor, Law +61 3 9214 5660
mbagaric@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE318
Helen Bird Industry Fellow +61 3 9214 8879
hbird@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE315
Dr Rachael Burgin Senior Lecturer, Law
Course Director, Bachelor of Criminal Justice and Criminology
+61 3 9214 4435
rburgin@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE328
Dr Peng Guo Lecturer, Law  pguo@swin.edu.au
+61 3 9214 3352
AGSE324
Dr Ben Gussen Senior Lecturer, Law +61 3 9214 3545
bgussen@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE325
Dr Toan Le Senior Lecturer, Law +61 3 9214 3352
tcle@swin.edu.au
AGSE326
Associate Professor Natania Locke
Associate Professor, Law
Deputy Department Chair 
+61 3 9214 3544
nlocke@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE321
Professor Amanda Scardamaglia Dean and Department Chair +61 3 9214 5870
ascardamaglia@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE323
Dr Alex Wan Lecturer, Law +61 3 9214 4716
awan@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE327

Dr Julia Tomassetti

Lecturer, Law jtomassetti@swinburne.edu.au AGSE325
Eleneth Woolley Lecturer, Law +61 3 9214 4863
ewoolley@swinburne.edu.au
AGSE324
Jacqueline Meredith Lecturer, Law  jmeredith@swinburne.edu.au
+61 3 9214 3630
AGSE324
Samaya Arguello Gomez
Lecturer, Law 
marguello@swinburne.edu.au
+61 3 9214 4344
AGSE324

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. 

Rodney DeBoos 

Rodney DeBoos is a consultant to Davies Collison Cave Law and Davies Collison Cave Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys, having previously been a partner of the firm for over 20 years. He practises mainly in the area of commercialisation of intellectual property and for a number of years lectured on that topic in the Graduate Diploma in Intellectual Property program at the University of Melbourne. 

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. 

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. 

Irene Zeitler 

Irene Zeitler holds an LLB (Hons)/BA (Hons) from the University of Melbourne, an LLM from Monash University, and a postgraduate master degree in German Law from Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Germany. She was a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills from 1987 to 2012 where she specialised in intellectual property and technology. Irene is a graduate of Australian Institute of Company Directors and was a member of the Intellectual Property Sub-Committee of the Law Council of Australia from 1990 to 2012. 

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.

Latest news

  • Oracle and Swinburne School of Business, Law, and Entrepreneurship staff celebrating the partnership’s launch at Swinburne's Hawthorn Campus. Eight people all stand together next to a whiteboard with a promotional image displayed
    • Business
    • Law
    • University

    Swinburne and Oracle partner to enhance student employability

    Swinburne and Oracle have partnered to provide students with valuable industry interactions.

    Tuesday 05 December 2023
  • Stuttgart, Germany - 07-03-2022: Smartphone with logo of communications company SingTel Optus Pty. Ltd. on screen in front of website. Focus on center-left of phone display.
    • Business

    The Optus chief was right to quit but real change is unlikely at the telco until bigger issues are fixed

    Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin bowed to the inevitable on Monday and resigned as chief executive of Australia’s second largest telecommunications company. Why inevitable? Poor communication and a lacklustre response during a major system outage is bad enough. Then things got worse when Bayer Rosmarin and the director of Optus networks admitted at a Senate hearing on Friday they had no disaster management plan for the kind of national outage experienced two weeks earlier.

    Monday 20 November 2023
  • Optus store front
    • Law
    • Business

    The Optus outage shows us the perils of having vital networks in private hands

    Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is set to front a Senate inquiry this week, probing last week’s colossal outage which left millions stranded without internet or mobile phone connectivity for a staggering 14 hours. The company has faced severe critisism for its handling of the outage, including for its lack of urgency in updating the public.

    Wednesday 15 November 2023
  • A freeway with cars driving and a train in the middle lane.
    • Technology
    • Law

    National road-user charges are needed – and most people are open to it, our research shows

    The High Court ruled last week that Victoria’s road-user charge for electric vehicle (EV) drivers is unconstitutional. Because the court decided it’s an excise, only the Commonwealth can now impose such a tax.

    Wednesday 25 October 2023
  • Laptop with a zoom meeting open
    • Law
    • Technology

    Does your employer have to tell if they’re spying on you through your work computer?

    The COVID pandemic stimulated an irreversible shift in where, when and how we work. This 21st-century model of working – dubbed the “new normal” – is characterised by increased flexibility and productivity gains.

    Tuesday 10 October 2023

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