Blazing a trail
in Australia

Juliana expresses it more forcefully: “I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Juliana soon made her own outstanding contribution. She gained a reputation for her forensic ability to work out exactly what clients required and to devise a suitable strategy for resolving the dispute. She was a strategic thinker but also extremely organised and a detailed planner, which meant she was always able to explain her course of action by reference to her orderly layout of the issues and the plan. She had a love of winning (always useful in a litigator). And she had a fierce commitment to justice, fairness and equality. 

Juliana says the key thing was developing close relationships with clients. By contrast with corporate lawyers who may have regular interaction with clients on deals, litigators are only called on when there is a dispute, which clients would obviously prefer not to have. “You have to manage that. I’ve forged some great client relationships with people over the years. When clients need you, they really need you,” she says. 

Not for nothing did Juliana gain a reputation for helping clients in crisis situations or the “bet-the-farm” disputes, where everything was at stake. 

Juliana says “Of course not all cases can be won and often the best outcome is a timely settlement on good commercial terms which is much better than the worst potential outcome. So ‘success’ might look different. It might involve some short-term pain, but be in the client’s best interests in the long run. The problem has gone away and the endless bleed of money out the door has stopped. Clients would always appreciate that.”

She worked on many major pieces of litigation, but two cases stand out for Juliana. The first was Hospital Products v United State Surgical Corporation, a leading case in fiduciary obligations, and the other was AWA v Daniels, which determined the duties imposed on non-executive directors. She can also count among her many triumphs insolvency cases, participation in several commissions and inquiries and the handling of anti-money laundering cases, as well as countless corporate litigations. 

Juliana had at least two significant management roles. The first was head of the Litigation practice in Sydney from 1999 to 2003. The second was as office managing partner of the Sydney office from 2012 to 2020, following the merger with Herbert Smith. 

As others have found, being managing partner has its highs and lows. Lawyers being lawyers, they tend to have views on everything, and, as joint owners of the business, are entitled to air their views – often thinking they know best. “Managing lawyers can be very rewarding, but sometimes it feels a bit like laying drains,” Juliana says with characteristic humour. “If the drain doesn’t work, you’ll hear about it, but if the drain does work, nobody’s ever going to say, ‘that’s a great drain’.”