The documented facts of Dominic Bourke's life place him in Western Australia, where he completed his university law studies and entered legal practice. The firm with which he is documented, Robinson Cox, had roots in nineteenth-century legal practice in Albany and Perth, which places his career within the long-established legal profession of the state.
Dominic Bourke studied law at the University of Western Australia, where he took a Bachelor of Laws degree.
The University of Western Australia was established in 1911 by an act of the Parliament of Western Australia, supported by a large bequest from the newspaper editor and chairman of the royal commission that proposed it, Sir John Winthrop Hackett. The university opened in 1913 with 184 students in engineering, science and arts, and it conferred its first degrees in law, science, arts, medicine and engineering in 1914. A law school commenced at the university in 1928, and the institution later moved to its present Crawley campus.
Bourke's documented professional career is in the law in Western Australia. He was admitted to the bar in Western Australia in 1974 and later worked as a partner of Robinson Cox.
Robinson Cox traces its origins to Albany, where Samuel Johnson Haynes took Robert Thomson Robinson on as his first partner in March 1889. The practice later traded under several names, including Haynes, Robinson & Cox and Robinson, Cox & Wheatley, and its senior partners included Robinson and Charles Baxter Cox. The firm had an office in Howard Street, Perth, and its records describe it as one of the oldest legal firms in Australia in terms of continuity.
