Gerard King studied law at the University of Western Australia, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws. The university was founded in 1911 as the first university in Western Australia and began teaching in 1913, giving the state its first institution of higher learning.
During the decades after the Second World War, law in Western Australia was taught and practised largely through the university and the profession based in Perth, the state capital.
Gerard King was admitted to the bar in Australia in 1963. He later worked as a partner of Phillips Fox, a law firm whose name is associated with a Melbourne practice. The Australian Dictionary of Biography describes how a Melbourne partnership formed in the 1890s by Philip David Phillips and his son Morris Mondle Phillips eventually became Phillips, Fox & Masel.
Phillips Fox's Perth operations had traditionally been run through a franchise arrangement. In March 2006 a number of its Perth partners left to form Lavan Legal, and the Perth business was fully integrated into the firm's national operations in April 2006.
Phillips Fox later formed an alliance with the global firm DLA Piper and became known as DLA Phillips Fox. When DLA Piper opened for business in Australia, it absorbed the firm and the DLA Phillips Fox name was closed.
