McLeod develops passion for land usage

Unlike most of the categories in this year’s Legal Elite, which primarily focus on the major industry players, the planning and environment section features practitioners from both large and small firms.

According to those surveyed by WA Business News, Glen McLeod from Minter Ellison is a leading lawyer in the field, along with last year’s winner, Tony van Merwyk from Freehills.

Other prominent names were Michael Hardy from Hardy Bowen and Greg Boyle from Jackson McDonald, with many of those who contributed to the survey saying there was a shortage of good planning and environment lawyers in Perth.

Mr McLeod agrees that there is a shortage of lawyers in the specialised field, but says one of the attractions for him is the ability to have a tangible impact in the world.

“Planning and environment are very intellectually challenging areas, particularly in some of the more esoteric areas like compensation and valuation,” Mr McLeod said.

“Couple that with an interaction with other professions, dealing with sophisticated clients and having an impact on the built environment around us, and it’s a fantastic area to work in.”

Mr McLeod began his career working as a legal administration officer for the City of Cockburn before joining a planning legal practice and spending six years working in the UK.

“I didn’t want to go straight into the narrow confines of legal practice before trying something else, and I remember very clearly having a discussion with a magistrate who told me it would be the best thing I could do for my career,” he said.

One of the key moments steering Mr McLeod in the direction of planning and environment was attending in Singapore what he calls the ‘first ever true environmental law conference in the region’, in 1983, when environmental concerns were at the forefront of new legislation.

“Today, with so many conservation laws and concern over urban sprawl, land-use conflicts are more and more coming to the fore,” Mr McLeod said.

“Politics pays such a big role in planning now that we inevitably find ourselves running up against politicians as part of what we do.”

One of the politicians for whom Mr McLeod has a lot of respect is Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan, particularly her ability to make decisions and get things done.

The nature of planning and environmental law has shifted away from being a litigious process to one that has developed a certain level of sophistication, according to Mr McLeod.

“Planning and environment law forces landowners and developers to pay close attention to how they manage their processes and with planning becoming much more complex, the concentration of players is becoming smaller,” he said.

“Major complex development sites are only suited to big developers who have the resources and the expertise to do them.

“The development industry has reached a level of some sophistication, and it’s not just about squeezing every last dollar out of the development sites – they can’t afford to do things like that.”

Mr McLeod said one of the significant matters he was working on was acting for UWA in relation to its landholding in Shenton Park, with “ongoing disputes with the WaterCorp and significant environmental and town planning challenges involved”.

In the recent tendering process for the Perry Lakes redevelopment, Mr McLeod acted for the Satterley Group, and does ongoing work for the group.

Among his other clients are Cockburn Cement, with ‘ongoing’ environmental issues, and several local councils and redevelopment authorities.