Christopher Edquist's documented background is centred on Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, where he completed his university studies and built his legal career. The University of Melbourne, founded in 1853, was the first university in Victoria and remains one of Australia's leading universities. Lawyers admitted in Victoria are admitted to practise by the Supreme Court of Victoria, and Edquist was admitted there in 1976, later extending his admission to New South Wales in 1986.
Edquist studied at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws. The university, established in 1853, was the first institution of higher education in Victoria and provided the academic foundation for the legal training of many Victorian practitioners of his generation.
Edquist's professional career developed mainly at Phillips Fox, a Melbourne law firm that traced its roots to a family of lawyers in Melbourne. He was admitted to practise in Victoria in 1976 and remained with the firm for about thirty years, becoming a partner in 1983. The firm was known as DLA Phillips Fox in its final years, and after DLA Piper opened for business in Australia and absorbed it, the Phillips Fox name ceased to operate as a separate firm.
Within the firm he held a series of senior positions, culminating in leadership of its national property, infrastructure and development practice. His work covered tenders, development agreements, consultant agreements, building contracts and a range of dispute resolution processes. He acted for the Victorian Government on projects including Federation Square, the Australian Synchrotron project and the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium project, and his experience also included the MCG Northern Stand and the National Gallery of Victoria redevelopment. Federation Square is a cultural precinct in central Melbourne, and the Australian Synchrotron is a research facility in Victoria, so these projects reflected the public infrastructure work carried out by Melbourne's construction and development lawyers.
In 2009 Edquist left Phillips Fox after thirty years and joined Holding Redlich, a Melbourne law firm, as a senior partner in its construction and infrastructure team. He was described as a construction specialist, and the move connected his experience in major public projects with a firm that also served construction clients in Melbourne.
