alistair wyvill sc

Year of first admission:

1984

Jurisdictions:

Australia, England and Wales (Middle Temple), Papua New Guinea

Career:

Mr Wyvill was first admitted as a legal practitioner in 1984. He has practised exclusively as a Barrister since 1986 including for 10 years at the English Bar, predominantly in commercial and construction law. He has appeared in over 50 reported cases at all levels in Superior Courts in England and Australia. He is a former President of the Northern Territory Bar Association and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. He is a member of the Advocacy Training Council of the Australian Bar Association and has trained advocates in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.

Mediation:

Having joined the English Bar at the time of the introduction of the Woolf Reforms in the United Kingdom in 1999, Mr Wyvill was quickly immersed in a mediation culture. That culture emphasised the importance of attempting mediation even before proceedings have been commenced.

After returning to practice in Australia in 2008, he introduced that culture to his home jurisdiction – the Northern Territory. He drafted what became Practice Direction 6 of 2009 entitled “Trial Civil Procedure Reforms” for its Supreme Court. The practice direction introduced a mediation culture into the Territory for the first time. That culture is now well-established with many if not most substantial commercial disputes in the Territory resolving at mediation before proceedings are commenced in accordance with the practice direction.

After completing his training as a mediator with LEADR (now the Resolution Institute) in 2009, Mr Wyvill quickly established the largest commercial mediation practice of anyone resident in the Territory. Since then he has mediated or appeared as counsel in 100s of mediations around Australia. He has been accredited as a mediator by the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory since 2009.

In August 2019, he had the honour of attending the signing ceremony for the Singapore Convention on Mediation as a guest of the Singapore Government.

Asia:

In addition to enjoying many conferences and holidays in the region, Mr Wyvill has had a close contact with the law and legal institutions of South East Asia over most of his career, including:

• convening two law conferences (2014, 2016) for the Northern Territory Bar Association in Dili, Timor Leste, working closely with the local profession and judiciary
• representing Asian clients in matters in Australian Courts including
  1. the then Foreign Minister in exile for Timor Leste, Jose Ramos Horta, in the constitutional challenge to the Timor Gap legislation before the High Court of Australia reported in Horta v Commonwealth (1994) 181 CLR 183
  2. an Indonesian fisher, acquited of fishing offences said to involve the resources of the Australian continental shelf following an appeal to the High Court reported in Muslimin v The Queen (2010) 240 CLR 470
• providing advocacy training on many occasions for the Singapore Law Society and the Malaysian Bar Association
• instructing as foreign counsel in substantial commercial litigation in the High Court of Malaysia
• studying the Law and State of South East Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London
• providing training for judges in bankruptcy law in Vietnam
• judging the Indonesian finals for the Jessup Moot.