About Kelly Cooper

SPECIAL COUNSEL

Kelly has significant experience on both sides of the “industrial fence”, representing and advising both employees and employers. She has built her career around her ability to assist clients to understand and implement their workplace rights and obligations and to foster harmonious workplace relations. 

She has worked for private and public law firms, unions, one of Australia’s leading universities and Queensland government departments. 

Kelly has also been an in-house litigation lawyer for Australia’s workplace relations regulator, the Fair Work Ombudsman.

As such, Kelly is in the unique position of having a “360° workplace relations perspective”. This perspective places Kelly in good stead to advise her clients on both the legal technicalities of any given issue as well as the practical realities.

Her work has seen her appear in various judicial settings including the Federal Circuit Court, the Fair Work Commission, the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission, the Australian Human Rights Commission, Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Commission and Tribunal (as it was then) and the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

In these settings she has represented her clients in mediations and conciliation conferences and minor hearings as well as fully contested liability/penalty hearings, as instructing solicitor to Counsel.

During her time with the Queensland Government’s Crown Law, Kelly predominantly practiced anti-discrimination law – an area of special interest for Kelly.

In her early career, Kelly gained extensive experience in enterprise bargaining through her roles as a union officer and as the Australian National University’s first in-house Industrial Advocate, Kelly played an integral part in strategy development, negotiation and drafting of enterprise agreements and provided advice on balloting processes, proposed industrial action and certification processes.  Kelly also played a key educational role by delivering employee information sessions for the roll-out of newly certified enterprise agreements.

Qualifications

• Solicitor admitted to the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory
• Holder of unrestricted Practising Certificate in Queensland
• Bachelor of Laws, Queensland University of Technology
• Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice, Australian National University
• Bachelor of Arts (International and Industrial Relations), University of Queensland

Legal Practice Areas