Jane Hall, partner at Thomson Geer in Melbourne
Australia’s Thomson Geer has hired Jane Hall as a partner in Melbourne to strengthen its national workplace and employment capability across the country.
“Jane [Hall’s] combination of front-end advisory experience, litigation expertise and regulator-side insight strengthens our ability to provide commercially focused safety advice to clients across key sectors of the Australian economy, including construction, manufacturing, transport, government, healthcare and resources,” Adrian Tembel, chief executive partner at Thomson Geer, told Asia Business Law Journal.
He noted that the mentioned industries were most exposed to WHS (work, health and safety) risk and compliance complexity.
Hall was previously a partner at Holding Redlich in Melbourne for one year. Prior to that, she served as a principal lawyer at Loupe Legal for four years. She was a full-time member of Australia’s Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Commission (SRCC), the government body regulating the Commonwealth workers’ compensation and rehabilitation scheme, for seven years, and has served as a part-time member since July 2024.
With more than 25 years of experience, Hall’s expertise spans litigation, criminal prosecutions, safety systems, and WHS governance frameworks. Her practice is built around two key pillars, including incident prevention and incident response. She also provides end-to-end support to clients through critical risk management, compliance frameworks, executive briefings and litigation.
Hall has advised (Australian Securities Exchange) ASX-listed companies, private businesses and government clients on all aspects of health and safety law. She has managed more than 600 investigations and 300 prosecutions by safety regulators, achieving acquittals for both companies and managers in complex and sensitive cases.
The firm had deliberately expanded its workplace relations teams in Queensland and Canberra, and Hall’s addition in Melbourne complemented its growth with dedicated WHS expertise, said Tembel.
He has also observed that while Australia’s workplace safety record has improved over time, momentum has slowed. With 83% of traumatic injury fatalities and 62% of serious compensation claims concentrated in just six sectors, the need for experienced, pragmatic WHS guidance had never been greater, said Tembel.
In addition, clients faced a new generation of WHS challenges from psychosocial risk management and mental-health claims (which had risen more than 40% during the past decade), to climate transition, demographic shifts, hybrid work, AI and automation and increasingly complex contractual and supply-chain arrangements, said Tembel.
He emphasised that Hall’s arrival broadens the firm’s national reach and ensured it could provide specialist support across all Australian jurisdictions.
Thomson Geer’s national employment, workplace relations and safety team recently added partners Rachel Drew and Rose Dimitrious in June this year, and Adrian Wong in October last year.
