Stephen Hall is an Australian jurist who is a judge of the

Supreme Court of Western Australia The Supreme Court of Western Australia is the highest state court in the Australian State of Western Australia. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the state in civil matters (although it usually only hears matters involving sums of or more ...

. He was appointed to the general (trial) division of the court in 2009. In 2022, he was appointed as a permanent judge of the appeal division of the Court (the Court of Appeal).

Career

Stephen Hall is a graduate of the

University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...

earning a Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1983, a Bachelor of Laws in 1984 and Bachelor of Arts in 1987. He was admitted as a lawyer in 1985, after serving articles at the firm Lohrmann, Tindal and Guthrie. He joined the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in Perth in 1986. He worked in the Major Fraud Branch as part of a team dealing with large scale taxation fraud. He went on to work in the General Prosecutions Branch, and appeared as counsel in cases involving drugs, fraud, people-smuggling and fisheries. He was then appointed as the Senior Assistant Director in the Commercial Prosecutions Branch in 1991. In this role, he led prosecutions in a number of high profile cases, including the prosecution of

Alan Bond Alan Bond (22 April 1938 – 5 June 2015) was an English-born Australian businessman noted for his high-profile and often corrupt business dealings. These included his central role in the WA Inc scandals of the 1980s; the biggest corporate co ...

for the Bell Cash Strip, at that time the largest fraud case in Australian history. In 1999, Hall joined the Independent Bar of Western Australia. He initially took chambers at Wickham Chambers before later moving to Francis Burt Chambers. At the bar he specialised in white collar crime, corporate regulation, insolvency and corruption prevention. In 2001, Hall was appointed counsel assisting the

royal commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...

into the Finance Broking Industry. In 2002, he was appointed counsel assisting the Police Royal Commission. He was also retained as counsel assisting the Corruption and Crime Commission in a number of investigations in which public hearings were held. These included hearings into allegations of misuse of public office and political lobbying. In 2003 he was appointed Senior Counsel (SC). From 2006 to 2009, Hall was retained as National in-house counsel by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. In this role he appeared as counsel in trials and appeals in South Australia, Queensland, Victoria, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. Hall was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court on 6 July 2009. For four years, he was the judge in charge of the criminal list. At this time he became well known as the presiding judge in a number of high-profile cases: * Dr Chamari Liyanage, 2016 * Jemma Lilley and Trudi Lenon, 2018 * Anthony Harvey, 2019 * Claremont serial killings, 2020 * Francis Wark, 2021 * The Motorplex Sniper (murder of bikie boss Nick Martin), 2021 In 2022, Hall was appointed as a permanent judge of the Court of Appeal, the highest court in the hierarchy in Western Australia. He had previously served as an acting judge of appeal.

References

Judges of the Supreme Court of Western Australia Living people University of Western Australia alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Australian Senior Counsel {{Australia-law-bio-stub