Blaze e-catalogue - Catalog - Page 102
Lea
Armstrong
First woman
NSW Crown Solicitor
“Leadership comes in all sizes
and shapes and all different
personality types. You don’t
have to be like an ‘alpha male’.
You don’t have to dominate
the room. You don’t have
to be overconfident. You can
be yourself and still develop
into a very fine leader.”
Lea Armstrong was appointed NSW Crown
Solicitor in June 2015. She is the first woman
to hold this role since it was established in the
Colony of NSW in 1817. Ms Armstrong oversees
approximately 400 staff across eleven diverse
legal practice groups, and corporate service
groups, within the NSW Crown Solicitor’s Office.
The Office provides legal services to the
NSW Government and its agencies across
all its core functions.
Ms Armstrong is a solicitor with 25 years’
experience in government and commercial law,
gained both in the public and private sectors.
Prior to becoming NSW Crown Solicitor,
Ms Armstrong was NSW Treasury’s General
Counsel, and in this role, advised the
Government on its electricity privatisation,
the long term leasing of the State’s three largest
ports (Botany, Port Kembla and Newcastle),
and on other structural reforms. Earlier in her
legal career, she served as an Assistant Crown
Solicitor at the Crown Solicitor’s Office heading
both the Commercial Law and Administrative
Law teams at different times.
Before joining the Crown Solicitor’s Office
in 1995, Ms Armstrong worked for a major
commercial law firm and spent a year
as an associate for Justice Michael McHugh,
then a judge of the High Court of Australia.
law & justice
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