John is a partner of Kennedy Partners. He is recognised throughout the Melbourne family law community as a leading family lawyer and has expertise in all areas of family law, including complex parenting and property disputes, financial and child support agreements, and international matters involving forum and jurisdictional disputes.
John has been practising in family law since 1993. After working in various firms, including a major eastern suburbs law firm in Melbourne, he joined Kennedy Wisewoulds (as the firm then was) in 2007, and became a partner of the firm in 2012.
John has been an accredited family law specialist since 2003. He has been a member of various committees of the Family Law Section of the Law Institute of Victoria since 2003 chairing the Maintenance and Property Sub Committee between 2011 and 2018 and the Courts Practice Committee since 2019. He was a sessional teacher and marker within the family law elective of the Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice Course with the Australian National University between 2011 and 2016. He has been a sessional lecturer and tutor at Deakin University since 2021.
John is regularly sought out by legal publications and continuing professional development (CPD) providers to contribute to the pool of discussions around the interpretation, and evolving nature, of the court’s approach to resolving family law disputes. He was a consulting editor as to family law precedents for LexisNexis between 2013 and 2015. In June 2019, John co-organised and presented at a family law conference in Malta, involving judicial officers, lawyers and psychologists from each of Malta, Australia and the United States.