BRISBANE: Association of Corporate Counsel (QLD) and Piper Alderman | Managing the pressure to “Just say Yes”

Phil is the current Vice President for the Queensland Division of the Association of Corporate Counsel. Phil is an experienced senior governance executive with over 20 years in the energy and resources sector and 30 years as a lawyer. He has held significant roles in executive management and first-tier private legal practice, dealing with governance, regulatory, transactional, and contentious matters. Phil is also active in various not-for-profit professional organisations and mentoring programs. He has served on the Queensland Law Society Council and chaired several of its committees.

Lani is the current Secretary for the Queensland Division of the Association of Corporate Counsel. She is the Regional Counsel for Stryker South Pacific. Lani has extensive experience in legal counsel roles, having previously worked at Toll Group, Norton Rose Fulbright, and Thomson Geer.

Melissa is an accomplished corporate counsel with extensive experience across various sectors. She began her career in private practice, focusing on intellectual property, insurance, and commercial litigation. Following this, she joined the Queensland Government with the Environmental Regulator.

Melissa then transitioned to in-house roles, gaining expertise in industries such as oil and gas exploration, infrastructure projects, and environmental law compliance. She is currently the Head of Legal at Kelsian Group, a leading company in the transport industry.

Paul Venus is a highly experienced lawyer specializing in commercial litigation, dispute resolution and commercial law, across Australia.

With over 29 years of experience, he has acted in all levels of the Australian Court system, including the High Court of Australia, Federal Court of Australia, Supreme Courts of Queensland and New South Wales, District Courts, and Magistrates Courts.

His expertise spans practice areas which are characterised by high levels of regulation. Those include Competition and Consumer law, Intellectual Property Protection, Privacy, Franchising, Technology, Defamation law, Insolvency litigation, and Banking litigation. He is also an experienced franchising and commercial mediator, who is familiar with the Mandatory Codes of Conduct prescribed by the Competition & Consumer Act.

As a trusted adviser, Paul is known for his responsiveness to client needs, clarity and commerciality of advice, and strong advocacy. Clients, ranging from multinational corporations to SMEs to high-net-worth individuals, rely on Paul for counsel. They turn to him when making difficult decisions, requiring help in stressful situations, or seeking to navigate legal complexities to achieve high value outcomes for their business. His approach to providing practical context to legal problems and achieving exceptional outcomes for clients has earned him high praise from his clients.

Paul also has substantial experience in contract disputes, negligence cases, corporate law disputes, and shareholder disputes.

In addition to his litigation expertise, Paul brings a wealth of knowledge in commercial and corporate law. Real world industry knowledge has been gained by Paul from non-executive director roles in the Electricity and Health sectors. Paul has also gained experience in not-for profit organisations as a non-executive director in a research foundation and a charitable trust.

Paul’s expertise as a commercial lawyer, and excellent drafting skills enable him to provide strategic commercial advice and negotiate a wide range of agreements for clients. He has substantial knowledge advising clients on directors’ duties and responsibilities, conflicts management, continuous disclosure, board decisions, responses to regulator notices and investigations.

Paul holds a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Queensland, a Masters of Laws from Queensland University of Technology, and a Certificate of Arbitration and Mediation from the University of Adelaide. He is admitted as a legal practitioner in the High Court of Australia, Supreme Court of Queensland, Supreme Court of New South Wales, Supreme Court of South Australia, and Supreme Court of the Northern Territory.