David Grace

What first sparked your interest in this area of law, and what continues to fuel your passion for it today?

I first became seriously interested in this area of law when I was involved in a cartel case spanning the 1990s and early 2000s. What particularly enticed me was the opportunity to engage extensively with the full spectrum of the Board and senior management of the organisations I was advising. Over a number of years on the case, I developed a strong rapport and became very well known to the key stakeholders, which enabled me to more effectively promote the firm's broader capabilities. The first cartel case took four years to finalise. A few years later, I was asked to act in a second cartel case that took five years to conclude. The work required the assistance of several junior lawyers, fostering heightened interest in this expertise throughout the firm. Building on this momentum, I promoted the formation of a Competition & Consumer Law Committee within the Queensland Law Society and had the honour of serving as its inaugural Chairman. I led the Competition & Consumer Law Committee with commitment for the next ten years.

Competition and consumer law sits at the intersection of public policy, regulation and corporate behaviour. What aspects of this field do you find most intellectually challenging – and most rewarding?

The vital area of competition and consumer law risk management fundmentally challenges the corporate culture within an organisation. A key aspect of succeeding in this field involves understanding that corporate culture must be shaped from the top down. Through this insight, I identified the need for tailored competition and consumer law programs and began developing such initiatives for various companies. In time this extended to providing general advisory on competition and consumer law, preparing compliance programs for corporate clients and delivering training across diverse sectors of the economy. Training requires a deep comprehensive knowledge of the roles of everyone within a business that intersects with competition and consumer law provisions, which creates a propicious interface with important players in a business and provides the opportunity to continue to elevate the profile of my law firm within the corporate sector.

How has your approach evolved in response to recent changes in the enforcement priorities, especially with the ACCC's current focus areas?

Each year, we look for the announcement of the Regulator's priorities and we incorporate those priorities into our training programs. This way, clients develop their understanding of where the Regulator's focus is and often leads to the opportunity to provide further legal advice outside competition and consumer law.

What trends or issues do you see are most critical for businesses to watch in 2025 and beyond, particularly around consumer protection and digital platforms?

The two major areas of competition and consumer law for the digital economy are, in competition law, cartel conduct; and in consumer law, misleading and deceptive conduct, false and misleading conduct and unfair contract terms. Our training emphasises these points and has a heavy leaning towards ensuring participants understand the cartel framework and circumstances where they are at greatest risk of contravention. For consumer law, the focus is on false and misleading and deceiving and deceptive conduct, highlighting situations within a corporation's daily business where those risks more commonly arise.

For digital platforms, the significant risk is whether those platforms operate to affect markets within Australia, which attracts the regulatory authority of the Competition & Consumer Act and whether the promotion of clients' products on the digital platform is done in a way which is misleading or deceptive and the knowledge or otherwise of the platform operator with respect to such contents.

Recognition at this level often reflects not just individual work, but a broader team collaboration. What do you think sets your practice – and your colleages – apart in such a competitive field?

In our practice I have established a Competition & Consumer Law Committee, which comprises lawyers from many expertise within the firm and emphasises the relevance of competition and consumer law within the legal practice. The knowledge and understanding of competition and consumer law across the firm minimises the risk of a lawyer who is not familiar with competition and consumer law principles providing advice in a way that could impact upon a client's responsibilities under competition or consumer law.

You built a career working with clients across sectors, from large corporates to industry bodies. How do you tailor your legal strategies to meet such varied commercial needs?

The work of my Competition & Consumer Law Committee has been to examine industry bodies and look for opportunities that may be likely to produce work for the firm. Where the industry body is relevant to clients of our firm, that is generally not difficult to get instructions. When the firm does not have significant client presence within an industry, those industry bodies are more challenging and less likely to be approached, as we prefer to target 'low hanging fruit' in our strategies.

There's growing pressure on companies to address issues like green washing, misleading claims and unfair contract terms. What advice would you give to GCs and in house teams trying to future proof their compliance efforts?

These three issues also form the focus of our training and advice to General Counsel will be to ensure that the key operatives within an organisation understand the laws that may apply to their roles and how to appropriately deal with others. It is essential to understand the specific circumstances in which those provisions apply. Where long term contracts were entered into before the date upon which unfair contract laws took effect, GCs should ensure that commercial operatives understand that enforcing any unfair term of a pre existing contract is unlawful under the new legislation. Furthermore where, before the date of amendments to the law, commercial people within the organisation may have been used to taking certain strategies in enforcing contract terms, those strategies must be now reviewed in the light of the new laws.

Looking back on your career, are there any cases or moments that were particularly defining in shaping your approach to legal problem solving?

I think that there were several matters that shaped my approach to legal problem solving. Since 1990, I have been involved on Boards of several companies, some publicly listed, publicly unlisted and proprietary companies, others regulated by Australian Securities & Investments Commission only and a few regulated by that Regulator plus other Federal Regulators affecting financial services companies. As a director of those companies I have understood the need to provide legal advice in a commercial context and to frame advice having regard to the client. That does not affect the advice given, which depends purely upon the application of legal principles to factual situations but rather presenting it in a way that best assists the client to address problems that arise because of it.

What does this award mean to you on a personal level and how do you hope it helps spotlight the importance of competition and consumer law in Australia's evolving legal and economic landscape?

This award means a great deal to me. It has enabled me to enhance the importance of competition and consumer law in a number of sectors because of my recognition of expertise in this area. The result of that has been the introduction of new clients across a range of industry sectors, which is extremely satisfying. Australia leads many areas of the Asia Pacific in competition and consumer law and the opportunities that exist continue to unfold and will do so indefinitely into the future.