John Morgan's documented life is centred on Sydney, where he studied at the University of Sydney and built his legal career. The university was established under colonial legislation passed in 1850 and was formally opened in 1852, making it the oldest university in Australia.
John Morgan's documented qualifications are a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Laws from the University of Sydney. The university was founded on principles of religious tolerance and academic merit-based admission, and it has long been among Australia's leading centres of higher education.
Legal teaching at the university has a long history. Sydney Law School began offering legal examinations in 1855 and started a full program of legal instruction in 1890 after appointing its first dean. The Master of Laws is a postgraduate degree that builds on an undergraduate law qualification.
John Morgan's documented professional career is rooted in Sydney legal practice. He was admitted to the bar in New South Wales in 1973. From 1977 to 1986 he was a partner at Abbott Tout Creer and Wilkinson, a firm that a former High Court justice later described as one of the oldest in New South Wales.
From 1987 he was a partner at Allen Allen & Hemsley, a Sydney firm whose lineage is traced to a practice founded in 1822 by George Allen. The firm moved to the Equitable Building in George Street and took on the English-born lawyer Alfred Hemsley, who joined in 1894 and later served in the New South Wales Legislative Council. In July 1987 the firm joined the Australian Legal Group, an association of Australian firms that cooperated without merging, before merging with Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks on 1 July 2001 to form Allens Arthur Robinson.
He remained a partner at Allens Arthur Robinson until 2014, when he became a consultant to the firm, which is now known as Allens. Allens is an international commercial law firm operating in the Asia-Pacific region and is independently owned by its partners.
He also holds an academic appointment as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Law & Justice area of the School of Private & Commercial Law at the University of New South Wales. In 2017 he co-authored an article on professional indemnity insurance in the University of New South Wales Law Journal, examining how insurance protects clients and how professionals are regulated.
(Co-authored with P. Hanrahan and published in the Univers...)
2017
