Dean Jones

Dean completed his Law Degree at Melbourne University in 1989 and began his legal career at two of Melbourne’s biggest law firms, gaining experience in property, liquor licensing, general commercial advice, trusts law and general commercial litigation. He subsequently refined his skills in the areas of commercial litigation, debt recovery and enforcement, contract and leasing disputes and general insolvency law.
After being actively involved in the earliest application of the then-new voluntary administration legislation in mid-1993, Dean built a successful practice around a diverse range of complex insolvency and associated litigation files (covering all aspects of bankruptcies and liquidations). By working closely with a number of Australia’s leading accountants and insolvency practitioners, Dean was able to service the needs of a diverse range of clients who from time to time encountered or appointed controllers, administrators, liquidators or trustees.
In recent years, Dean has developed a much broader-based commercial law practice (with a particular interest in succession planning), while training and supervising other lawyers and helping to run a number of businesses in which he has had or still has a personal interest. He also more recently diversified into the areas of criminal law, probate and Will disputes.
In particular, Dean has:
• drafted new precedents and helped orchestrate the appointment of Australia’s first Voluntary Administrator on the first day of operation of new legislation (23 June 1993);

• appeared as advocate in all State courts in both civil and criminal proceedings and in federal courts in insolvency matters;

• prepared and constantly refined terms and conditions of trade and various other credit documents over a twenty year period – to the point where a number of clauses have become industry standard;

• drafted and seen implemented almost every conceivable type of commercial document over more than a quarter of a century of practice, ranging from agency agreements to website provisions;

• acted for a group of telecommunications companies and orchestrated an insolvency reconstruction which resulted in hundreds of jobs being saved throughout Australia;

• recovered compensation for a client in the hundreds of thousands of dollars after two years of bitterly contested litigation over a much smaller sum in the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria.