John Snowdon is an Australian lawyer based in Melbourne, Victoria, who became a partner of the law firm Phillips Fox. He studied law at the University of Tasmania and was admitted to the bar in Tasmania in 1970.
Background
John Snowdon's documented background is connected with Tasmania, the Australian island state where he studied law and was later admitted to the bar. The University of Tasmania was founded in 1890 and is Australia's fourth oldest university. Its Law Faculty was established in 1893, and for many decades it was underfunded and relied on practitioners for part-time teaching.
In Tasmania, law graduates were required to take articles with a law firm for two years until 1972, when this period was reduced by a six-month Legal Practice course. Admission to the bar in 1970 therefore fell within the period when articles were the standard route into legal practice.
Education
Snowdon studied at the University of Tasmania, where he received a Bachelor of Laws degree. The university is a public research university located primarily in Hobart, Tasmania, and it is Australia's fourth oldest university. Its law teaching was closely linked to the state's legal profession for much of its early history.
He was admitted to the bar in 1970, completing the university study and professional admission that were required for legal practice in Tasmania at that time. Legal education in Tasmania was raised to a new level when the Law Faculty was established in 1893, and student numbers began to grow in the late 1960s.
Career
Snowdon's documented professional career centers on Phillips Fox, where he worked as a partner. The firm's own description traces its origins to 1864, when it was founded as P.D. Phillips in Melbourne. Over later decades it developed into one of the largest law firms in Australasia.
In 1990s and early 2000s corporate affairs, Phillips Fox entered an exclusive alliance with DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, and the combined firm later operated under the name DLA Phillips Fox. A later company profile describes the firm's practice areas as including banking, finance, funds management and superannuation, risk management, taxation, competition and trade practices, and insolvency.
