David Roylance

Background

David Roylance's documented professional life was centred in Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria, where he studied law at the University of Melbourne. The university was established by an act of the Victorian Parliament on 22 January 1853, and its founding act gave it power to confer degrees in arts, medicine, laws and music.

Melbourne had long been one of Australia's principal commercial centres, and many of the country's largest corporations were based there before national law firms expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. Roylance's legal career developed within this commercial environment, first in Melbourne's general practice of Westgarth Middletons and later in maritime and trade law.

Education

Roylance studied law at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree. The university was founded in 1853 and initially offered arts, with law added in 1857, reflecting local demand for practical subjects such as law at a time of rapid settlement and commercial growth.

Roylance was a law student at the University of Melbourne when he first met Eugenia Mitrakas, who was also studying law there and later became his wife.

He was admitted to the bar in Victoria in 1974, linking him to the legal profession of the state in which his later career was based.

Career

Roylance practised as a solicitor with Westgarth Middletons in Melbourne in 1990 and later became a partner of the firm. Middletons presented itself as a firm with a 100-year heritage and as one of Australia's premier transport, trade and logistics legal service providers. Its Melbourne transport and trade practice was ranked highly in its field.

In December 2005, the Victorian transport and trade groups of Middletons and Blake Dawson Waldron were announced as the basis of a new Melbourne practice of the UK firm Holman Fenwick & Willan. Roylance, together with former Middletons partners Robert Springall and Gavin Vallely, was named among the partners to head the firm's Australian operations. Later, Vallely, Roylance and Springall resigned from the Melbourne office of Middletons, which then restructured its transport, trade and logistics group.

Holman Fenwick & Willan was founded in London in 1883 and was early known for representing maritime clients after shipwrecks and collisions. The firm expanded internationally from the late 1970s, opening offices in Paris in 1977 and Hong Kong in 1978. Its Melbourne office was the firm's first Australian office, established to serve participants in the Asia and South Pacific trades.

Roylance's practice concentrated on maritime transport and trade. A law news report described him as a specialist in ship sale and purchase and conversion contracts and in offshore oil and gas projects, including large-scale litigation in those areas. The same report credited him with advising multimodal logistics operators and with drafting standardised carriage contracts for a leading liability insurer of multimodal carriers' risks.

Connections

Roylance was married to Eugenia Mitrakas, a Greek-born legal figure whom he first met as a fellow law student at the University of Melbourne. In 2026 she received the Law Institute of Victoria's highest honour, and in her acceptance speech she paid tribute to him as her late husband, a prominent shipping lawyer.

Wife:

Eugenia Mitrakas

Greek-born legal figure who first met him as a fellow law student at the University of Melbourne and received the Law Institute of Victoria's highest honour in 2026.

References

• Neos Kosmos Report on Eugenia Mitrakas receiving the Law Institute of Victoria's highest honour, which describes David Roylance as a prominent shipping lawyer, her late husband, and a fellow law student she met at the University of Melbourne.
  2026
• LAWFUEL – The Law News Network Announcement of the move of Middletons' transport and trade partners to Holman Fenwick & Willan's Melbourne office, with a description of Roylance's maritime, transport and trade expertise.
• Lawyers Weekly Report on the formation of the Melbourne transport and trade practice of Holman Fenwick & Willan from former Middletons and Blake Dawson Waldron teams, including Roylance as one of its heads in Australia.