Phil Jackson

After being admitted to the NSW Supreme Court, Phil worked at the Crown Solicitors Office in the Community Law Division, assisting with subpoena returns, anti-discrimination disputes and the public interest immunity defence to the disclosure of government business. He was involved in high-profile government litigation including ACCC v Port of Newcastle [2021] FCA 720 and the prosecution of the family court bomber, R v Warwick no 1 [2020] NSWSC  1151 (there are a total of 94 reported judgments in this matter).

After his stint at the Crown Solicitors Office, Phil relocated to a prestigious commercial practice on the Central Coast where he worked alongside an accredited business law specialist. His work at this practice focussed on property, wills, estate planning, debt recovery, strata, environmental and building and construction matters. Phil:-

• acted for a developer defending the form of a payment schedule issued in response to a non-compliant payment claim under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payments Act1999 (Art of Kitchen Pty Ltd -v- Steve Mudge Design and Construction t/as  Mudgecorp, unrep).
• had carriage of a long-running and ultimatelysuccessful objection to a development application to expand a concrete-crushing operation whose dust emissions were having an adverse impact on neighbouring businesses. While the Senior Commissioner accepted the developer’s evidence, she imposed strict air quality conditions and tonnage limits:  Fitzgerald v Central Coast Council [2020] NSWLEC 1445.

After several years Phil moved to a nearby law firm, dividing his time between deceased estate work and a diverse transactional practice. After doing the hard yards commuting to the Central Coast for a number of years, in 2021 Phil made the call to return to his hometown of Newcastle and take on the challenge of running his own firm – which, he is happy to say, ‘runs him off his feet’.

Before law

Phil was a highly regarded research scientist who worked for several decades in universities (ANU, Sydney University), the government (CSIRO), and the private sector. During that time, he was one of the few trusted mass spectrometry specialists in the country, actively sought out by local and international industry and academic professionals for advice. He gained first-hand experience in research organizations’ commercial affairs and was heavily involved in tenders, acquisitions, and the installation of multi million-dollar research infrastructure.

Phil also published research papers, book chapters, secured competitive grants and designed patented processes for his employers. His work has been cited many times and he has sole-authored international research papers, one of which features on a NASA/Smithsonian database (see link and JASMS). If solvent-mediated proton-coupled electron transfer reactions or ion-molecule interactions in the gas phase pique your interest, Phil is more than happy to chew your ear about the minutiae, or even discuss the finer points of snare drum tuning, chasing your music dream and being mentioned in your favourite band’s biographical (page 246, Your Band Sucks by Jon Fine).