Lara O'Rorke

Prior to joining the Bar, Lara was a Senior Associate at Arnold Bloch Leibler, and a solicitor at Clayton Utz.

As a solicitor, Lara has experience advising and acting for companies and individuals in a wide variety of commercial and civil law disputes involving interlocutory hearings, final hearings, appeals, arbitrations and mediations in jurisdictions including the Supreme Court of Victoria, Magistrates’ Court of Victoria, County Court of Victoria, VCAT, Supreme Court of New South Wales, High Court of Australia and the Federal Court of Australia.

Most recently Lara acted for the funder in the Banksia Securities Limited class action in its remitted application for costs and commission (and in its application for special leave to the High Court of Australia), Bensons Property Group in Supreme Court of Victoria, Court of Appeal and VCAT proceedings, a large creditor in the Sargon Group liquidation, a large creditor in the Ralan Group liquidation, and developers and owners in various owners corporation disputes.

Lara holds degrees in Law and Media & Communications from The University of Melbourne, and she has recently completed the ARITA Introduction to Insolvency Program. Lara read with Banjo McLachlan and her senior mentor was Dr Catherine Button KC (now The Hon Justice Button).

Since coming to the bar, Lara has been briefed in a variety of matters including the following:

Orora Limited v Peter J Ramsay & Associates Pty Ltd & SMEC Australia Pty Ltd (led by Suresh Senathirajah KC and Adam Rollnik, instructed by Wotton + Kearney)

VicBeef Holdings Pty Ltd and VicBeef Meat Pty Ltd v Chen and Cai (led by Carl Moller and Xuelin Teo, instructed by Wisewould Mahony)

The Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence (led by Banjo McLachlan)

Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation