Samuel's documented life is centred on Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, where he pursued legal training and built his professional career.
The University of Melbourne, which awarded his law degree, was made possible by wealth generated by Victoria's gold rush. Its original buildings opened in 1855, in an era of rapid settlement and commercial growth, and the institution was designed to serve as a civilising influence on colonial society.
Samuel studied law at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree. Melbourne Law School traces its origins to 1857, when the university's founding chancellor, Sir Redmond Barry, established Australia's first law course. The school combined scholarly teaching of legal principles with preparation for legal practice, and Victoria became one of the first places in the common law world where lawyers had to complete part of their training at university.
The LLB was later phased out. Its final intake took place in 2007, and the school subsequently adopted the Juris Doctor as its entry-level law degree.
He was admitted to the bar in Victoria in 1974.
Samuel's documented legal career was based in Melbourne, where he worked as a partner of the law firm Phillips Fox. The firm's name reflects a Melbourne practice whose origins lay in a partnership formed in the early 1890s by Morris Mondle Phillips and his father, Philip David Phillips, a solicitor and leading insolvency lawyer; that partnership eventually became Phillips, Fox & Masel.
The firm later became part of a larger national and international practice. When the global firm DLA Piper opened for business in Australia, it absorbed the other firm and the DLA Phillips Fox name was closed.
