Profile
Caroline Callegari was only three years post-admission in 2011 when she found herself before the High Court as part of a legal team, arguing against a special leave application in Western Export Services Inc v Jireh International Pty Ltd [2011] HCA 45. She had guided the matter from an original Supreme Court of NSW decision through to that hearing, working alongside her firm’s managing principal and counsel.
“I will never forget standing in the High Court building in Sydney in front of judges whose decisions I had studied, listening to them give a short ex tempore judgment on the special leave application,” she says. “It taught me a lot about myself, about legal practice and about the importance of team.”
Caroline is now associate principal at Sharrock Pitman Legal. Over the past five years, she has built the firm’s litigation department from the ground up, through strategic hiring and client relationships. The practice has grown in three years from local business disputes to representing national corporations and manufacturing, industrial and property clients.
In 2025, Caroline added another feather in her cap by becoming an Accredited Specialist in Commercial Litigation with the Law Institute of Victoria while raising two young children. Examiners singled out her exam as exemplary, and it now features in the Law Institute’s reference material. curriculum guide.
She credits much of her growth to communication, which she considers her strongest professional quality. “Honest and open communication is the key to finding the right outcome for all involved,” she adds.
Caroline shares that her biggest challenge is navigating client relationships in the age of AI. She notes that while it improves access to justice, it removes some of the human element in the process, drives higher expectations, inflated confidence, and more second-guessing of her advice against what AI says.
“The latter can also happen more frequently when you are a woman lawyer because of the unconscious bias some clients have about a male versus a female litigator and being hard versus soft,” she adds. Her response is leaning into her “trusted advisor” role and building client relationships that add value.
Caroline wants the next generation of women in the profession, including her own daughter, to see a full career and a full family life as compatible goals, not competing ones. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” she quips.
This is why she volunteers with law-student mentoring programs, such as the Macmillan School of Practising Lawyers, and keeps her door open for informal conversations with women across the profession.
Caroline also hopes to see a genuine four-day week, worked at full-time output, and recognised and paid as full-time work, so more women can build a career without financial penalty. For all her milestones, she says it is the small, everyday gestures of encouragement, not any single case or accolade, that she hopes will define her legacy.
Above all, Caroline hopes to show, through her own example, that success doesn’t require a certain mould. “You don’t have to be hard and masculine to succeed in a career in commercial litigation,” she says.
Level 23, 457 Collins Street, Melbourne 3000
(03) 95602922
sp@sharrockpitman.com.au
au.linkedin.com/in/carolinecallegari/
sharrockpitman.com.au
Caroline Callegari
Associate Principal Sharrock Pitman Legal
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Bio
Milestones
2007
2022
2023–Present
2024-Present
2023–2024
Solicitor at Meerkin & Apel
2007
Special Counsel at Sharrock Pitman Legal
2022
2023–Present: Associate Principal at Sharrock Pitman Legal
2025: Accredited Specialist (Commercial Litigation)
2023–Present
Partner at Piper Alderman
Doyle’s Recommended Lawyer for Tax 2025
Named among Best Lawyers for Tax 2025/26
Tax Institute Tax Service Award 2026
2024-Present
2023: Became an award-winning author of The Splits: how to help your kids navigate separation and divorce
2024: Became an Accredited Family Law Specialist in October 2024
2023–2024
Milestones
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