Thomas Macfarlane is an Australian lawyer based in Perth, Western Australia. He studied law at the University of Western Australia, was admitted to the bar in 1965, and became a partner of the national law firm Phillips Fox.
Education
Macfarlane studied at the University of Western Australia, where he completed a Bachelor of Laws. The university was established in 1911 by an act of the Western Australian Parliament and was the state's first university; it began teaching in 1913 in engineering, science and arts. Law became its fourth faculty in 1927.
The Law School was founded in 1927 with strong support from the Barristers' Board and the local legal profession, and it is the oldest law school in Western Australia. Before such university courses existed, qualification as a lawyer relied on a five-year articled clerkship, and the four-year Bachelor of Laws later combined with a three-year clerkship as an alternative route. Macfarlane was admitted to the bar in Australia in 1965.
Career
Macfarlane practised law in Western Australia as a partner of Phillips Fox, a national law firm. The firm operated under the collective name Phillips Fox from 1985 to 2006 and is regarded as the first national law firm in Australia. Its Perth practice had traditionally operated through a franchise arrangement before it was integrated into the national network.
In 2006 the firm's Perth partners were given a choice between staying and leaving. Those who left formed Lavan Legal with the boutique firm Bennett & Co, and the Perth operation of Phillips Fox was fully integrated into the group's national operations in April of that year. In late 2006 the firm relaunched as DLA Phillips Fox, an alliance with the global firm DLA Piper, a name that was discontinued in 2011 when DLA Piper absorbed the business in Australia.
