Lex Lasry

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Lex Lasry QC is a prominent Australian lawyer and a judge in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Lasry graduated from the prestigious Haileybury College, Melbourne then Monash University in Melbourne. He was admitted to practice law in Victoria in 1973 and was appointed Queens Counsel in 1990. ^[1]

Lasry is the former chair of the Victorian Criminal Bar Association. In August 2004 he was appointed as the independent observer representing the Law Council of Australia at the trial of Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Matthew Hicks. ^[2] He attended Military Commission hearings at Guantanamo Bay in August 2004 and March 2007.

Between 2003 and 2006 Lasry acted as senior counsel assisting the Coronial inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires.

Lasry has acted as defence counsel in several high profile criminal cases in Australia and overseas. He acted on behalf of Joseph Thomas in a high profile Australian terror trial (see R v Thomas) in which Thomas was convicted of receiving funds from a terrorist organisation and for passport offenses. The conviction was overturned on appeal. Lasry represented Van Tuong Nguyen in the high profile case in which Van Nguyen was convicted of drug trafficking in Singapore in 2004 and executed in December 2005. Recently Lasry has taken up the case of two of the Australians convicted of drug trafficking in Indonesia, known as the "Bali nine". ^[3]

Lasry is entitled to practice law in the Australian jurisdictions of Victoria, New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. ^[4] He is also a member of the Council of the International Criminal Bar for counsel practicing before the International Court of Justice. He also chairs appellate hearings for the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) and for V8 Supercar racing. He holds a motor racing licence. ^[5] Lasry has chambers in Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra.