Michael Salter's documented life is centred in Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria. He studied at the University of Melbourne and later entered the legal profession in Victoria, where his professional career developed.
Salter studied at the University of Melbourne, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws with Honours. The university's law teaching began in 1857, when its founding Chancellor, Sir Redmond Barry, established Australia's first law course.
Melbourne Law School was designed to combine scholarly teaching of legal principles with preparation for legal practice. Victoria became one of the first places in the common law world where lawyers had to complete part of their training at university, and a later university handbook describes the Bachelor of Laws as accredited for admission to legal practice in Victoria.
Salter was admitted to the bar in Victoria in 1970. The Victorian Bar is the body of barristers in the state, and admission to it placed a lawyer within the independent bar of Victoria's legal profession.
He later worked as a partner of Phillips Fox, a Melbourne law firm that traced its origins to 1864, when it was founded as P.D. Phillips. The firm later became one of the largest in Australasia and entered an alliance with the global firm DLA Piper, operating as DLA Phillips Fox before DLA Piper absorbed its Australian business.
