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In the next three bulletins we will profile our three senior construction lawyers. The first profile is that of Justin Cotton, who is the firm’s Director. Justin hails from New Zealand and, like Hon Consul Kim Lovegrove MSE RML FAIB, studied law at Auckland University. Justin commenced practice as a construction lawyer with the firm’s previous incarnation Lovegrove Solicitors in 2002. Save for a couple of years at another law firm, Justin has been at this law firm for 16 years, which, save for the founder of the practice, makes him the second longest standing lawyer at this construction law firm (established in 1993 – nigh on 3 decades ago).

Justin is the Chair of the Industrial Relations and  Contracts Committee of the Victorian Branch of the HIA. His construction law practice is cross-jurisdictional as he is instructed by building practitioners and small to medium enterprises in NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Queensland. He is an expert in all manifestations of construction law; not limited to:-

• Building practitioner advocacy
• Body corporate litigation
• Residential dispute resolution
• Regulatory probity and compliance
• Practitioner misconduct law
• Security of payment claims or defending such claims
• The resolution of planning appeals

Kim Lovegrove identifies Justin’s key strengths as being “thousands of hours of immersion in the resolution of construction disputes and the assembly of a critical mass of knowledge that helps his clients stay out of harm’s way. As the old adage goes, there’s no substitute for experience and Justin has ‘truck loads’. Very few lawyers in the country feel as at home advising clients in Sydney or Canberra vis a vis Melbourne in the increasingly complex paradigm of construction law, but two decades of cross jurisdictional legal representation has honed this rare set of complementary skills”.