Nicholas Shepherd is an Australian lawyer based in Melbourne, Victoria. He was admitted to the Victorian bar in 1986 and became a partner of the Melbourne firm Westgarth Middletons, whose origins lie in the 1870s.
Education
Nicholas Shepherd studied at Monash University, which was established by an Act of the Victorian Parliament in 1958. The university followed the Murray Report, commissioned in 1957 by Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies to establish a second university in Victoria. It was named after the soldier, engineer and administrator Sir John Monash, and was the second university founded in Victoria after the University of Melbourne.
Teaching began at the Clayton campus in 1961 with 363 students. In its early years Monash was best known for research in the sciences and for innovative teaching in law and medicine, and it expanded quickly into further faculties, including law.
His degrees from Monash were a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws. He was admitted to the bar in Victoria in 1986, which marked his entry into legal practice in that state.
Career
Nicholas Shepherd practised law in Melbourne as a partner of Westgarth Middletons. The firm's roots lie in two nineteenth-century practices. Westgarth, which was based in Sydney and established in the 1870s, was best known for building and construction work, while Middletons, a Melbourne firm also founded in the 1870s, specialised in transport matters with a strong emphasis on shipping.
In 1988 Westgarth Baldick of Sydney merged with Middletons Oswald Burt of Melbourne to form Westgarth Middletons, a firm that then had about sixty partners and associates and more than 280 staff. The merger was intended to rank the firm among Australia's leading law practices and was driven by improved client service. In 1991 the firm merged again with Corrs Australian Solicitors and Chambers McNab Tully and Wilson of Brisbane, establishing Corrs Chambers Westgarth, which traces its origins to the Melbourne firm Whiting and Byrne, formed in 1841.
