As a Partner at McGrathNicol in Melbourne, I specialise in advising businesses on both proactive and reactive uses of technology in the areas of cybersecurity, privacy, digital forensics and technology-led investigations.In addition to being deeply inolved in 5 of the 10 Royal Commissions in Australia in the past 15 years, I am a forensic technology expert with more than 15 years of specialist experience I am held in high regard by attorneys and the Courts, and have undertaken complex computer forensic examinations for civil litigation including as an Independent Forensic Expert for the Supreme and Federal courts of Victoria and New South Wales.I work regularly with boards, executives, independent directors, and senior business leaders in organisations of every size to consider and set technology strategies for forensic practices, evidence management, cyber, privacy, data protection and information risk management. I maintain extensive experience spans across a wide range of industries, including business services, construction, entertainment, financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, leisure, manufacturing, retail and technology.One of my key areas of focus is the application of digital forensic and investigative expertise to help resolve time-critical and highly sensitive issues as they arise. These matters range from large-scale data breaches or theft, through to employee misconduct or intellectual property matters.

For the past 7 years, I have provided guest lectures on Digital Forensics for the University of Melbourne Business Forensics and Fraud unit (ACCT20006).

Principal areas of practice matter and information management, litigation project and technology consulting, web based data room project consultingProfessional work experienceMichael is a Project Consultant in the Project Services team, Minter Ellison's in house applied legal technology group. A Registered Practitioner in the Prince2 Project Management methodology, Michael is an expert Consultant on litigation. From scoping and planning of litigations and arbitrations, and advising legal teams on all aspects of specialist legal technology, Michael strives to provide sound advice and work closely with clients and our in house legal teams to achieve the best result for clients. Drawing on a comprehensive knowledge of information management and technical capability, he regularly assists clients in managing projects at all stages and sizes – from large scale litigation, to smaller arbitrations. Prior to joining Minter Ellison, he designed, implemented, and managed technology-driven approaches for some of the largest litigious matters in New Zealand, while working for the Department of Inland Revenue. This included working as a core team member on the ground-breaking Structured Finance litigation - New Zealand's largest tax avoidance case involving the Bank of New Zealand and Westpac Banking Corporation. This litigation led to two High Court wins and a subsequent industry settlement leading to recovery of $2.2bn of disputed tax and penalties.Michael has lent his expertise in driving large-scale litigations backed by his multi-faceted IT and Project Management knowledge. His ability to recommend and administer multiple technologies to drive efficiencies in matter management is of great advantage to the legal groups at the firm and results in cost savings for clients.

For a period of two years, I was contracted to the Litigation Management Unit at the Department of Inland Revenue NZ (IR) specialising in Litigation Technology and Information/Knowledge Management/Systems including development/design. This role gave me the opportunity to shape the information management roadmap for the Department at both a legal unit level (<50 staff), and an enterprise (>5000 staff) level. This roadmap aims at securing data and ensuring information integrity for defensibility and preservation of chain of evidence.Highlight - Technology manager/consultant for Inland Revenue (IR) in the successful win of the Structured Finance cases ($2.2bn) in the High Court of New Zealand.Electronic Courtroom experience for large scale High Court trials.Litigation technology support including advanced level support for AD Summation.Case management experience - technology consultant for high level and high profile cases at Appeal and High Court level.Database administration/management including experience re-building corrupted AD Summation databases and rebuilding of OCR databases.Development of unique similarity review methodology and practical application for use with AD Summation.Creator of VBA Scripts (Word/Excel) including automated extraction of document references/bates numbers from affidavits/ transcripts, load file creation, excel data validation and manipulation.