Shaun McGushin's documented education took place in Australia, first in Tasmania and later in New South Wales, before he entered the legal profession. The University of Tasmania is located in Hobart, the capital of the island state, while Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, is where his documented professional career was based.
McGushin studied law at the University of Tasmania. The university was established in Hobart by an Act of the colonial parliament on 1 January 1890 and was the fourth university founded in Australia in the nineteenth century. Its law faculty dates from 1893 and is regarded as the fourth oldest law school in Australia.
He later completed a Master of Business Administration at the University of Sydney. Founded in 1850, the University of Sydney is among the oldest universities in Australia and has long been a major centre of higher education in New South Wales.
McGushin was admitted to the bar in New South Wales in 1980 and subsequently worked as a partner of Freehill Hollingdale & Page in Sydney. The firm's history began with Brian Page, who joined the Hollingdale brothers in 1936 and became a partner in 1938. The practice took the name Freehill, Hollingdale & Page in 1947 and moved into corporate and commercial work within Australia and internationally.
Under Page's direction, the firm was known for an open employment policy that hired Catholics and Jews when many other firms did not. In 1978 it appointed a female partner, among the first major Australian firms to do so, and in 1979 it formed a joint national partnership with a Perth firm. In 2000 its state partnerships combined into a single national partnership called Freehills, which merged with Herbert Smith in 2012.
He later became a partner in the Sydney office of Corrs Chambers Westgarth, joining the firm's banking and finance practice from Freehills. Corrs traces its roots to Whiting and Byrne, a Melbourne law firm formed in 1841, and was established as a national partnership in 1991 through a merger of three firms in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. The Sydney appointment strengthened the firm's national banking and finance capability, and his documented expertise covers corporate finance, project finance, structured and leveraged financing, and debt capital markets.
He is currently a director in the banking and finance group of Ash St, a Sydney firm whose team includes senior lawyers and consultants. His documented practice covers infrastructure, public private partnerships, project finance, corporate finance, and capital markets, and his firm profile states that he has more than 35 years of experience advising local and international corporates.
