Legal Eagles

Three Wallace & Wallace Lawyers have been named as "lawyers you should know about".  The following is an excerpt from an article by Janessa Ekert, senior court and crime journalist with The Courier Mail and The Daily Mercury published on 21 March 2022:

From criminal to commercial, family to personal injuries, these are some of the men and women helping to shape the legal system across the region.

From representing a man accused of killing another at the Andergrove Tavern to taking on Mackay Regional Council over proposed investor rates, these are some of the top lawyers across Mackay and Whitsundays.

Brad Shanahan
Personal Injuries Law Accredited Specialist

Brad Shanahan actually met the best man at his wedding through his work as a personal injuries lawyer.

With a career now spanning 35 years, the Wallace & Wallace partner laughed he chose to study law because “I was really good at English, and I wasn’t very good at maths”.

He completed his articles of clerkship in 1985, was admitted in 1991 when he also moved to Mackay and gained his specialist accreditation in personal injuries law in 1998.

“You’re dealing with people … like the breadwinner or mum or dad have been seriously hurt at work or in a car accident and they just really need help,” he said.

“I’ve always enjoyed that personal interaction with the person and just trying to help them through that difficult time.

“When something goes wrong there’s a lot of shock. Then there’s a period of disbelief and then it sets in that there’s a permanent problem and therefore their future is jeopardised.”

Mr Shanahan said those injured suffered stress and anxiety and many decompensate into psychological issues.

“I try and put them on the right path to get help,” he said.

Less than one per cent of all personal injuries claims actually go to court, he said.

“Because they’re all subject to mediation and conciliation,” he said.

“Back when I first started every case went to litigation and often trial, back in the 90s when everything went to court.”

These days most cases were settled long before.

“It’s is a lot less stressful for the client,” he said.

“Because there’s this whole process of mediation and discussion, and round table meetings with the insurance companies."

“Most claims we can settle well before court. Everybody wins that way.”

There was a real reward in helping those who had effectively had the life they knew stripped away and through his work Mr Shanahan had made lifelong friends.

“A lot of people can recover to a certain extent and it’s very rewarding when, it might take a year, it might take two years, that person gets back to work and things are back to normality,” he said.

“It’s very rewarding, that’s why I’ve done it for so long."

“The best man at my wedding was a former client.”

The man had been badly injured when the Caneland Central car park was being created in the mid 90s.

“We became friends after his claim was finished, kept in touch and he was the best man at my wedding in 2019,” Mr Shanahan said.

In another instance, also in the mid 90s, Mr Shanahan acted for a group of backpackers who had been on a bus travelling to Airlie Beach.

“The bus swerved to miss a kangaroo and ran off the road,” he said.

“I acted for 14 of those backpackers that suffered a whole series of terrible injuries because the bus rolled and a lot of them weren’t wearing seatbelts which was unfortunate.”

Mr Shanahan said it was an interesting case because his clients were from the UK, Canada, Poland and Spain.

“We had to get all these people assessed all over the world with different doctors and translation of reports … so we had to get interpreters,” he said.

Mr Shanahan also sits on the board of Headspace Mackay and the Directorship of Anglicare North Queensland.

James Bailey
Family Law Accredited Specialist

James Bailey has found his niche in what can often be one of the most emotional areas of law.

At a pivotal moment in high school when teenagers were deciding what career path to take, Mr Bailey said someone suggested law.

“I took that on board … started studying and discovered I liked it, particularly the family law space,” he said.

“It’s all about the most crucial and central relationships in your life and when they come unstuck … it’s a fairly momentous life event for anybody that goes through it.

“Everybody deals with that in a different way, and you get to interact with people going through varying emotions and you’re there to guide and help them through that process.”

Mr Bailey graduated from University of Queensland in 2002, followed by two years as an articled clerk at Wallace & Wallace in Mackay before his admission in 2005.

“And still here,” Mr Bailey said.

As well as being a partner at the firm Mr Bailey also went on to achieve his specialist accreditation in family law.

“Certainly it was the most challenging thing I had done since I was at uni,” he said.

Mr Bailey has also sat on the Queensland Law Society committee that sets and marks the assessment to become an accredited specialist.

In family law Mr Bailey said there were cases that “really resonate with you”.

“With some family law clients who have more difficult issues … you tend to have quite a long and in some ways quite an intense relationship with clients,” he said.

“So people do have an impact.”

Untangling sometimes messy property settlements where one party may have tried to hide assets or high conflict parenting cases involving children, Mr Bailey said these cases also tended to be memorable.

“Emotion drives a lot of decision making for people who are separated,” he said, adding understanding the impact of decisions was a crucial part.

“Some of those cases really resonate with you and you don’t forget the client’s names, even client’s from 18 years ago are still very memorable."

There was one thing that kept him passionate about family law.

“Every case is different,” he said.

“There is no two cases that are the same."

“I find people inherently interesting and as a family lawyer you get to know people quite well and sometimes not always in their best moment."

"And you really do see people change through the experience. They often come to you with a significant amount of stress and a problem they can’t solve and by the end there’s some level of resolution.”

Outside work Mr Bailey is also a board member on both St Francis Xavier Mackay School and Mackay Children’s Contact Service, and a volunteer at Mackay Community Legal Centre.

Greg Smart
Commercial Litigation Accredited Specialist

Astute litigator Greg Smart decided he wanted to be a lawyer in Grade 4.

“I think it’s just because I’m an argumentative type and I enjoy a good debate,” the Wallace & Wallace partner said.

“I’m a very lucky person in that I’m literally doing the job I’ve always wanted to do when I was a kid.”

He graduated from the University of Queensland in July 2004, and later furthered his skill set by becoming an accredited specialist in commercial litigation in 2012 (highest achiever award) – one of only about 35 in the state.

"Which means I basically get involved in any kind of dispute that involves the courts that isn’t family law, personal injuries or crime,” he said.

“It’s probably one of the broadest areas you can practise in.”

One of the most infamous cases Mr Smart was involved representing a group of rental property owners taking on Mackay Regional Council in 2013 after it decided to introduce an investor rates category.

It equated to about a $300 slug for these ratepayers and there were about 150 clients involved. It went to the supreme court.

“It was an interesting case for a couple of reasons. One is that a lot of other councils had already introduced this and in particular Brisbane, Moreton Bay and Gold Coast,” he said.

“It was going to cost the south east corner something like $230m a year in lost revenue if they had to give up their investor rates category.”

"There was also a concern if it was deemed an illegal rating system, the council would have to back pay the previously collected rates."

“And some of them had been doing it for 10 years,” he said.

“It was potentially a couple of billion dollar problem.”

The group sensationally won its case in the supreme court, with council appealing the decision.

"But one night I think about 7.30pm a piece of legislation was amended changing the Local Government Act to state councils had the right to rate on this basis", he said.

“We ended up with probably 90 to 100 cane farmers banding together who didn’t want to pay the levy,” he said.

“The sugar cane community was pretty evenly divided among people who were vehemently against it and others who recognised it as a necessary evil.”

Becoming an accredited specialist is an intense assessment that involved a mock trial, three-hour written exam and an oral component.

The pass rate in his field was about 20-30 per cent, he said.

“Because it is so broad … in my area of law, any piece of legislation can come up at any time and you spend a lot more time with some of the more esoteric areas of law,” he said.

He also sits on the Queensland Law Society commercial litigation specialist accreditation advisory committee assessing other hopefuls.

A “downside” to his area of law, he said, was that litigation was expensive – so there was a real skill in finding a cost effective solution to complicated problems.

And as such often the smaller cases wound up being the most interesting and challenging.

“People will argue about a $1.2m (problem) because it’s $1.2m and sometimes it’s pretty cut and dry but you’re arguing about it because it’s a lot of money,” he said.

“Whereas someone comes to you with a problem that’s worth ($20,000) to them … and a day in court can cost upwards of $10,000, you’ve got to really manage those costs and it becomes a real challenge to deliver a result for the client that’s going to be practical and leave them better off."

“There’s no good me charging them $20,000 to try and recover $20,000.”

Mr Smart has worked in Mackay since 2005, minus an 18-month stint in Brisbane during which he practised as a barrister and has been at Wallace & Wallace since 2011.

He also is a member of Sunrise Rotary Club of Mackay and on both the Mackay Benevolent Society and Innovative Disability Employment and Liaison Placements boards.