Five senior lawyers have joined Gilchrist Connell across Adelaide, Perth and Sydney in a single recruitment round – a move notable not just for its scale but for what the specific practice areas reveal about where Australian insurers are facing the most acute legal demand.
The new hires cover financial lines, property and construction insurance, professional indemnity, medical law and regulatory matters - a spread that maps closely onto the claims categories generating the most complexity for insurers in 2026.
Claims handling and coverage disputes remain part of ASIC's enforcement priorities for 2026, keeping insurer conduct under active regulatory scrutiny. Catastrophe losses have sustained property and coverage disputes at elevated levels. Professional indemnity claims against healthcare practitioners and organisations are generating both civil and regulatory proceedings. Financial lines disputes are producing cross-border complexity as domestic and international insurers navigate concurrent jurisdictions. Gilchrist Connell's hire mix addresses each of these pressure points directly.
Timothy Searle joins the Perth office as a consultant, advising insurers and reinsurers on coverage, claims and disputes in Australia and internationally, with experience across financial lines and property and construction insurance drawn from practising in both Australia and the UK. William Majed Madani joins the Sydney office as special counsel, bringing more than 18 years' experience in dispute resolution and litigation with a focus on professional indemnity matters for domestic and international insurers.
The two medical law appointments are the most pointed signal of deliberate capacity building in a specific growth area. Emily Hunt (pictured left) joins the Adelaide office as a senior associate with experience defending complex medical negligence and malpractice claims across professional indemnity, personal injury and general insurance litigation. Franjo Saric (pictured centre) joins the Sydney office as a senior associate working across medical law and insurance litigation, including civil and regulatory matters involving healthcare practitioners and organisations. Two senior appointments with overlapping healthcare liability expertise in a single round suggests planned expansion rather than opportunistic hiring.
Courtney Hood (pictured right) joins the Adelaide office as a consultant following more than 17 years in the South Australian public sector, bringing experience across workplace conduct, regulatory matters and disciplinary proceedings across government departments and jurisdictions.
The five senior hires form part of a wider national recruitment round. Associates Abdallah Hani and Owen Ginman have joined in Brisbane; Chantelle Kaur, Taylor Johnstone, Ayesha Omer, Chanaia Sabando and Oliver Ray in Sydney; and Dana Paitaridis in Adelaide. A further 16 lawyers have joined across the firm's national offices.
CEO Belinda Cohen said the appointments reflected the firm's focus on building capacity for increasingly complex client risks. "These appointments reflect the depth of talent we continue to attract and our focus on building a strong bench to support clients facing increasingly complex risks," she said.
