Richelle is a Special Counsel in our Workplace Team.
Richelle is an expert adviser across the full spectrum of workplace matters, with a strong focus on providing practical and commercial advice to a wide range of corporate and government employers.
Experience & expertise
Richelle is a senior workplace lawyer with over 15 years of experience advising employers across the mining, transport, manufacturing, education and government sectors. She works closely with management, human resources and legal teams to deliver strategic, tailored advice and representation that responds to each organisation’s workplace challenges.
Richelle has strong expertise across all aspects of employment and industrial relations, including Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) interpretation and compliance, minimum entitlements, enterprise bargaining and industrial disputes, disciplinary and dismissal processes, restructures and redundancies, workplace investigations, anti-discrimination and work health and safety.
Admitted to practise law in NSW, Queensland and the High Court of Australia, and a skilled advocate, Richelle has a strong record of achieving positive outcomes in the Federal Courts and the Fair Work Commission, including in dismissal-related litigation and in the defence of work health and safety prosecutions. She is known for her proactive, practical approach to actively seeking to understand each client’s unique challenges and providing consistent and clear advice.
Work highlights
Richelle is a keen workplace litigator and has successfully defended employer clients in many legally and commercially significant cases.
Notably, she acted to preserve her client’s position in a test case involving the interpretation of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and taking leave on public holidays, and this case is regularly cited in other Court decisions concerning ordinary hours of work.
Richelle also acted in defence of a heavily contested challenge to a drug and alcohol dismissal which resulted in the Court upholding her client’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to this critical workplace concern.
Professional background
