Felicity Hampel AM SC

Felicity Hampel was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1996.

Felicity spends a considerable part of her spare time teaching advocacy skills to Australian lawyers, and is an internationally recognised leader in the field of advocacy teaching. She has, by invitation, trained trainers and taught advocacy skills to practising lawyers in most common law countries in the world.

She was an inaugural member of the teaching committee of the Australian Advocacy Institute, a not for profit organisation established in 1991 to provide advocacy teaching to the legal profession in Australia, and is the inaugural chair of its management committee.

She was a founding member of the Women Barrister's Association, and served as its convenor in 1995, an inaugural Board Member of Australian Women Lawyers, and is also a member of Victorian Women Lawyers and Feminist Lawyers. She was involved, through the Victorian Bar's Equality Before the Law Committee, in the commissioning of the groundbreaking report 'Equalising Opportunity for Women at the Bar'.

Her interest in equal rights is linked with a commitment to the broader issues of human rights and protection of individual freedoms. A long involvement with Liberty Victoria, the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties led to Felicity serving as president of the Council from 1998-2000. She gives many speeches on issues relating to women, human rights and civil liberties and discrimination.

Felicity was also a member of the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee for two years and on the Board of Options, a joint venture between the Mental Health Foundation and Liberty, which produced award-winning projects on mental health and human rights issues. She is also a member of the legal advisory panel of the VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Control.

A committed republican, she was a candidate for election to the Constitutional Convention in 1997, and was a deputy convenor of the Victorian branch of the Australian Republican Movement for the two years after that, which included the time of the referendum on the republic. She was made an honorary life member of the Australian Republican Movement after the referendum.