The NSW Bar Association awards a second 2023 Katrina Dawson Award

The NSW Bar Association is delighted to announce that Lucy Geddes is the recipient of the Katrina Dawson Award for September 2023. Lucy is originally from Griffith, NSW where she attended local public primary and high schools. She graduated from UNSW with degrees in Arts and Law, and has completed a Masters degree in Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science on a Lionel Murphy scholarship.

Lucy attended public primary and high schools in Griffith, NSW. She was admitted as a solicitor in 2014, having graduated from the University of New South Wales with degrees in Arts and Law. She has also completed a Masters in Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science on a Lionel Murphy scholarship. She was awarded best overall performance in her Masters, where she placed first in three subjects: International Criminal Law: Prosecution & Practice; Advanced Issues in Women, Peace and Security; and Gender & Militarisation.

She has worked as a public and criminal lawyer, with particular expertise in human rights law and over 10 years’ experience working across multiple jurisdictions including NSW, Victoria, South Africa, England, the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. Most recently, Lucy led Public Interest Advocacy Centre’s (PIAC) Asylum Seeker Rights Project.

Lucy has passionately advocated for clients from disadvantaged backgrounds, with particular achievements for clients with disability in her time working with Victorian Legal Aid. Lucy clerked for Chief Justice Mogoeng of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and also served as law clerk to Vice-President Cuno Tarfusser of the International Criminal Court.

Her achievements are not limited to the court room. In 2022, she served as an advisor for an Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs Diplomacy Training Programme human rights leadership course undertaken by 30 Indonesian human rights defenders. She has been a teaching fellow at UNSW since 2021 and will teach Public Interest Litigation there in 2024. She has also been published widely. In 2023 Federation Press published her first book, co-authored with Hamish McLachlan, 50 Human Rights Cases that Changed Australia. She has also worked closely with UNSW’s Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach in her postgraduate career, including conducting research on the role of women’s hearings in the design and implementation of reparations for victims of sexual violence.

Lucy is deeply committed to participating in life at the Bar, and in particular, contributing to the transformation of the profession to make it more diverse, inclusive and accessible.