Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) announced it has promoted four talented Australians within its Alternative Legal Services (ALT) practice, ensuring that HSF can continue to provide clients with innovation and value through the market-leading application of technologies.
From 1 January 2024, Brisbane based Gina O’Neill and Sydney based Ben Urdang have been promoted to Head of eDiscovery and Legal Technology, with Joseph Cook and Tahmina Ahsan both promoted to Head of Disputes (acting). Together, they join a leadership team at the helm of one of the largest New Law practices in Australia.
These promotions reflect the long-term investment that Herbert Smith Freehills has made into developing the team in its ALT Practice since Australian operations commenced its first-of-kind offering in 2015. These appointments build on the recent promotion of Akshaya Ravi, who was promoted to Head of Corporate and Real Estate for ALT Australia on 1 October 2023.
Being an Australian trailblazer, Herbert Smith Freehills has built the capabilities of the ALT team alongside the emergence of new technologies, and through this process, looked to ensure that its people have the skills and knowledge to realise the best outcomes for clients.
Director of Alternative Legal Services in Australia, Emily Coghlan, congratulated the team on their promotions.
Gina, Ben, Joseph, Tahmina and Akshaya have demonstrated their strong leadership skills over their time here at HSF, so we are excited to see them continue to develop their careers here with us as part of the leadership team.
“They each offer the cross-disciplinary skills needed to see our clients achieve their business goals by delivering targeted commercial outcomes, which are bespoke to the individual problems and opportunities they face.”
They each offer the cross-disciplinary skills needed to see our clients achieve their business goals by delivering targeted commercial outcomes, which are bespoke to the individual problems and opportunities they face.”
Emily Coghlan
Director of Alternative Legal Services in Australia
Gina O’Neill
Gina has been with Herbert Smith Freehills for over 20 years. In 2021, she achieved the status of Relativity Master and was the first female awarded the title in Australia. Gina is one of only 11 Australian Relativity Masters. With over 30 years’ experience in litigation support and the eDiscovery industry, she is technology focused and outcome orientated, specialising in structured and unstructured data analytics to assist clients with a range of big data challenges and proactive strategies for data management and review.
Ben Urdang
Ben has led eDiscovery teams on some of the firm’s largest document management exercises in recent years, with particular expertise in regulatory matters, class actions and significant litigations. He is an experienced practitioner in the eDiscovery and Legal Technology sector, specialising in the implementation of strategies for the identification, collection, processing, review, analysis and production of data and documents for legal matters.
Joseph Cook
Joseph is experienced in leading and managing large teams of qualified lawyers and experienced legal analysts on high volume and complex document-intensive legal work. This includes large scale litigation, arbitration, internal and external investigations and contentious regulatory matters. He is particularly focussed on developing solutions for clients that combine the right balance of people, process and technology to deliver highly effective and quality outcomes.
Tahmina Ahsan
Tahmina is responsible for leading and supervising solicitors and legal analysts to deliver high quality legal review services within the ALT Disputes practice. She is particularly focussed on the strategic design and management of workstreams to promote efficiency and high-quality project outcomes for clients. She has wide-ranging and deep sector experience acting for financial institutions, energy, infrastructure, government and public sector clients.
Akshaya Ravi
Akshaya leads our transactional work and brings over 10 years’ experience practicing as a corporate M&A lawyer to the role. As well as her experience in law, Akshaya has completed an MBA, and has spent time as an M&A strategy consultant focusing on advising clients on digital transformation strategies. Akshaya uses this background to bring together solutions for clients, leveraging a tech-savvy team, technology and process.
A global success story, ALT has an expert team of more than 350 lawyers, technologists and legal analysts globally providing clients with innovative insights and market-leading solutions for high-volume, document-intensive legal work. Over 150 of these experts are in Australia.
Key contacts
Akshaya Ravi
Head of Corporate & Real Estate – Australia Digital Legal Delivery, Melbourne
Media contact
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