Some disputes are
too significant to leave
to anyone but a partner.
Location
Sydney · Adelaide · National
Est.
Est. 2018 · 18 years litigating
Practice
Complex disputes · Construction · Financial services · Class actions
↓
The practice
Crichton & Co is a specialist disputes firm. We do not staff matters with junior lawyers.
Every brief is led by the same partner — supported by senior consultants and a paralegal team —
drawing on 18 years of top-tier disputes and independent practice depth.
Whether a dispute resolves in court, at mediation, or across the table, that outcome is pursued with the same rigour.
Full Federal Court · 2024
Chubb Insurance Australia v WSP Australia [2024] FCAFC — found for the client on each question. High Court leave refused.
Binding authority Professional indemnity · Construction
What sets us apart
01Partner delivery
The person who wins your matter is the person who understands it.
No hand-off. The partner who takes your brief leads strategy, runs advocacy, and reports to you — supported by senior consultants and a paralegal team. Every time.
02Top-tier depth
Tier 1 rigour. Without the Tier 1 cost base.
A decade honed at top-tier firms. The institutional overhead — associate levy, floor rates, practice group cross-subsidies — does not travel with us.
03Technology
What large firms bill in days, we deliver in hours.
Harvey AI, Relativity, and LexisNexis compress timelines across research, document review, and drafting. The saving is passed to you.
04Specialism
18 years of focus. No dilution.
Complex disputes. Construction. Financial services. Class actions. No property team. No employment compliance division. Narrow practices compound.
Sydney · Adelaide · National
"The Full Court found in favour of the firm's client on each question, establishing binding authority on professional indemnity coverage in construction. The same partner ran the matter from first instance through to the special leave application to the High Court."
Selected matter — Crichton & Co Legal · [2024] FCAFC
Practice areas
Disputes that demand a specialist.
01Complex Disputes & Litigation
Breach of contract, shareholder disputes, fraud, injunctions, and multi-party proceedings — in court, arbitration, and mediation. Where a dispute can be resolved efficiently without proceeding to hearing, that outcome is identified early and pursued with equal rigour. We operate nationally across all major Supreme Courts and the Federal Court — NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, and WA.
02Construction & Infrastructure
Complex construction and infrastructure disputes — including professional liability, multi-party claims, subcontract disputes, and project-related litigation. Acting for principals, head contractors, subcontractors, and consultants across Federal Court and Supreme Court proceedings.
03Financial Services & Insurance
Complex financial services disputes across fund management, investment structures, financial product disputes, and regulatory and conduct proceedings at the institutional level. Acting in insurance coverage disputes, policy interpretation, and claims advocacy for insurers and sophisticated insureds.
04Class Actions
Prosecution and defence of class actions in the Federal Court and Supreme Courts. Shareholder class actions, consumer claims, product liability, and large-scale group proceedings — acting for both applicants and respondents.
05Professional & Director Liability
Claims arising from breach of professional duty — against and on behalf of directors, architects, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and financial advisers — in the liability proceedings and any associated D&O or professional indemnity coverage dispute. We also advise directors on risk management, governance protections, and D&O policy structuring before a claim arises.
06Technology & Data Disputes
Complex litigation arising from technology system failures, failed implementations, procurement disputes, and data incidents. Acting for government bodies, corporates, and technology vendors in proceedings before the Federal Court and Supreme Courts.
07Legal Consultancy & Advisory
Specialist engagement for law firms, insurers, and corporates on disputes strategy, complex matter management, and risk. Advisory on litigation risk, ADR strategy, and resolution pathways — alongside or in advance of proceedings.
Selected matters
A record built in the courts.
01
Chubb Insurance Australia v WSP Australia [2024] FCAFC
Full Federal Court appeal — acted for the successful respondent insured. The Full Court upheld the first instance decision in full on each question of construction and coverage. Special leave to appeal to the High Court refused. Established binding authority on the operation of professional indemnity policy exclusions in construction-related claims.
Professional Indemnity · Construction
Full Federal Court 2024 · Public record
02
Gemi 193 Pty Ltd v Zhu [2024] NSWSC 1113
Acted for the defendant in proceedings where the plaintiff lender sought recovery of approximately AUD 1.8 million secured against the defendant's family home by guarantee and mortgage. Advanced an unconscionability case under the Contracts Review Act 1980 (NSW) and in equity, focusing on the circumstances in which the agreements were procured, the defendant's vulnerability, and the absence of adequate independent protection. Carriage from commencement through to judgment. The Supreme Court granted equitable relief, setting aside the loan and guarantees in full.
Commercial · Equity
Supreme Court NSW 2024 · Public record
03
Major infrastructure class action — natural disaster liability
Acting for respondents in group proceedings brought on behalf of tens of thousands of affected property owners following a catastrophic natural disaster. At commencement, among the largest class actions in Australian legal history by number of group members. The proceedings raised contested questions of infrastructure management, causation, and the quantification of loss across an extensive multi-year litigation program. Responsible for trial strategy, expert evidence coordination, and written and oral submissions.
Class Actions · Infrastructure
Supreme Court Confidential · Resolved
04
Consumer product class action — global manufacturer
Acting for applicants in a Federal Court class action against a major global manufacturer, arising from alleged defects affecting a substantial cohort of consumer products sold across Australia. The proceedings raised complex questions of product liability, ACL contraventions, causation, and loss quantification across a geographically dispersed group. Full carriage from commencement through the conduct of proceedings.
Class Actions · Consumer
Federal Court Confidential
05
Technology procurement dispute — national government program
Instructed in proceedings arising from a major technology infrastructure failure affecting a national government program. The matter raised contested questions of contractor liability, causation, and loss — including business interruption and reputational damage — arising from a high-profile system failure. Responsible for liability analysis, evidence strategy, and pleadings.
Technology · Government
Federal Court Confidential · Resolved
06
Multi-investor financial services proceedings — managed fund
Acting for a group of investors in a series of related Federal Court proceedings arising from alleged misconduct in connection with the management and investment of client funds. The matters raised questions of breach of fiduciary duty, Corporations Act contraventions, and complex damages. Carriage across proceedings at first instance and on appeal.
Financial Services · Securities
Federal Court Confidential · Resolved
Amie Crichton
Founder & Principal
BA LLB (Hons) Admitted NSW
The practice
Amie Crichton spent over a decade at top-tier firms before establishing Crichton & Co in 2018. She specialises in complex disputes, construction, financial services litigation, and class actions — the disciplines that define the firm today.
She has appeared in the High Court, the Federal Court, the Full Federal Court, and the Supreme Courts of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (International Relations & Criminal Justice) from Flinders University and a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.
The decision to found an independent practice was deliberate. The institutional model is designed for the firm's economics, not the client's outcome. Crichton & Co exists for clients who have worked out the difference.
The practice is supported by senior consultants and three specialist in-house paralegals — each embedded in the firm's matters and trained to the same standard the partner applies.
TeamSenior consultants · Three specialist in-house paralegals
BoardNon-executive director — startup · NFP (former)
Technology infrastructure
The economics of disputes, rebuilt.
We use best in class technology to do in hours what large firms bill in days. The saving is passed directly to you — not absorbed into write-offs or overhead recovery.
Harvey AI
Legal research, document analysis, and first-draft production. Reduces research time by 60–80% on well-defined questions. Reviewed by the partner.
Relativity
Enterprise e-discovery and document review. Predictive coding reduces review volume materially on large discovery exercises.
LexisNexis
Case law research, legislative history, and secondary source analysis. Verification and cross-referencing across all research-intensive matters.
Elevate
Legal process outsourcing for high-volume document review on large matters. Specialist review capacity that scales to the matter — clients pay for it when they need it.
NetDocuments
Enterprise-grade document management and security across every matter. Matter organisation and version control from instruction through to resolution.
Get in touch
Discuss your matter in confidence.
Suite 122, Mezzanine 39 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000
Enquiry
All enquiries are treated as strictly confidential from the moment of receipt. No information is shared with any third party. We respond within one business day.
Not sure if we're the right fit?
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Legal
Privacy policy.
Crichton & Co Legal (C&C) takes privacy seriously. We are committed to the protection of your personal data and the transparency of our privacy practices.
This policy explains how and why we collect, use hold and disclose your personal information.
'Crichton & Co Legal', 'C&C', 'we', 'us' and 'our' mean ANCLC Pty Ltd t/a Crichton & Co Legal ACN 629 274 862 of Suite 122, Mezzanine, 39 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000.
What is personal information?
Personal information is any information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who can be reasonably identified from the information or opinion. Information or an opinion may be personal information regardless of whether it is true.
What Personal Information does C&C collect & hold?
C&C is a boutique corporate Australian law firm. The types of personal information that C&C collects will depend on the nature of your dealings with us. We may collect personal information from you when you:
instruct C&C to provide you with legal advice;
purchase or subscribe to a C&C online service;
subscribe to a C&C newsletter;
subscribe to our website;
attend a C&C seminar;
have business dealings with us; or
apply, or register your interest for, employment with C&C.
The personal information we will collect from you will usually include your name, title, address and e-mail address and contact numbers (telephone, mobile). If necessary, for the purposes of providing advice to you, or for providing you with other information (such as email updates), we may collect other personal information from you, such as the areas of our practice which you are interested in. However, we do not collect personal information that we do not need.
While we seek to minimise the personal information we collect, if you do not provide us with the personal information we request, we may not be able to provide you with the services and other assistance you seek.
Generally, we endeavour to collect personal information directly from the individuals concerned. However, if this is not practicable, we may collect personal information about individuals from third parties, including from publicly available sources or third party providers.
If you are one of C&C's 'business contacts' (e.g. a contact person in one of our suppliers, or in a government agency or company with which we deal), we may collect basic business contact information from you (e.g. your name, title and work contact details) automatically using the details in your email signature.
C&C will not ask to collect sensitive information about you (such as details of your racial or ethnic origin, political affiliation, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, criminal convictions or health information) unless it is needed for the purposes of providing legal advice. In that case, we will only collect and use sensitive information with your consent, in accordance with applicable laws or in a de-identified aggregated manner.
How does C&C use Personal Information?
C&C's policy is only to use personal information collected from business contacts for the business purpose for which it was collected.
We collect, hold and use your personal information so that we can:
verify your identity;
provide you with products and services, and manage our relationship with you;
develop new products and improve our services to you;
contact you, for example, to respond to your queries, to seek your feedback, or if we need to tell you something important;
effectively undertake administrative purposes including processing payment transactions, charging and billing;
engage and manage our consultants, contractors and sub-contractors;
undertake governance and compliance purposes including quality, conduct or risk management issues;
comply with our legal obligations and assist government and law enforcement agencies or regulators;
undertake various business transactions, collaborations or arrangements such as part of an acquisition, disposition, merger or de-merger of a business or entering a joint venture or referral arrangement.
We may collect information about how you access, use and interact with the C&C website or social media platforms. We do this by using a range of tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and analytics embedded into our website. This information may include:
the location from which you have come to the site and the pages you have visited; and
technical data, which may include IP address, the types of devices you are using to access the website, device attributes, browser type, language and operating system; and
search terms or referral sources which have lead you to our website.
We also collect personal information so that we can communicate new legal or firm developments, including advertising new products or services that we offer to our clients and to those people who have subscribed to our website, alert services or mailing lists.
If, at any time, you do not wish to receive these kinds of communications, please let us know using the contact details set out below.
How does C&C handle personal information of job applicants?
C&C also collects personal information about, and from, individuals who apply for employment with C&C. The information we collect may include the applicant's:
personal contact details and gender;
educational and employment history, and relevant qualifications and employment history;
eligibility to work in Australia; and
referees' contact details.
We may collect this information directly from the job applicant or indirectly from a third party, including from a recruitment agency. If necessary, we will also collect information about applicants from referees and from professional social networking sites like LinkedIn, including in relation to the applicant's performance.
C&C uses the personal information we collect about job applicants to assess their eligibility and suitability for employment with C&C. Generally, our assessment of applicants' personal information will relate to a particular role. However, we may also retain and use applicants' personal information to assess their suitability for other roles with C&C. We may disclose personal information to service providers that conduct background and eligibility checks on our behalf.
For information as to how an applicant may access and correct the personal information we hold about them, or make a privacy complaint, please see below.
Will Your Personal Information be given to anyone else?
C&C does not sell, rent or trade personal information. Personal information may be disclosed outside of C&C in the circumstances described below:
DISCLOSURES TO EXTERNAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
C&C may disclose personal information to external service providers who provide services to you and help us operate our business. Examples of our external service providers include: third party data storage providers; IT and other software and systems providers; companies who provide photocopying and archiving services; advertising and marketing agencies who assist us with our campaigns and programs; referral agencies who provide us with specialist practitioners to support your matters; and research organisations and consultants who conduct research or provide legal services on our behalf. If C&C engages external service providers, C&C takes steps to ensure that those external service providers: take all reasonable steps to protect personal information about you; and are authorised only to use personal information that we provide to them for the limited purposes specified in our agreement with them.
DISCLOSURES OVERSEAS
Where C&C engages external information technology service providers, we ensure that, wherever possible, our data is stored within Australia. We may however disclose your personal information to recipients located outside Australia including, but not limited to, locations in the UK, New Zealand and USA.
DISCLOSURES PERMITTED OR REQUIRED BY LAW
Other than the scenarios above, C&C will only disclose personal information if disclosure is required by law, permitted under applicable laws, or with your express consent. C&C is also bound by professional obligations of confidentiality, including in relation to personal information.
Security of Personal Information
C&C takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of your personal information. We store most information about you in computer systems and databases operated by either us or our external service providers. Some information about you is recorded in paper files that we store securely.
Our IT systems are password protected and we conduct regular audit and data integrity checks. We frequently update our anti-virus software in order to protect our systems (and the data contained in those systems) from computer viruses. In addition, all C&C consultants, contractors and employees are required, as a condition of engagement, to treat personal information held by C&C as confidential.
We will also take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information once we no longer require it for the purposes for which it was collected or for any secondary purpose permitted under any relevant laws.
Access & Correction
You have the right to:
seek access to your personal information handled by C&C;
ask us to update or correct your personal information when it is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date; and
opt-out of receiving direct marketing communications from us.
If you wish to access the personal information that C&C holds about you, please set out your request in writing, and forward this to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details set out at the end of this Privacy Policy.
To provide you with access to your personal information held by us on our current records, C&C can provide you with a copy of the relevant personal information (ordinarily, an electronic print-out or a photocopy). C&C will not charge you for the cost of providing this type of access to these current records.
For legal and administrative reasons, C&C may also archive non-current records containing personal information, such as back up data files and offsite storage. Please note that if we do provide access to old records, we may charge you for the cost of providing such access.
If you are of the view that personal information about you is inaccurate or out of date, or if you have any other queries about access and correction, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact details set out below.
Online Privacy
USE OF COOKIES
We use cookies on the website. A cookie is a small text file that the website may place on your device to store information. We may use persistent cookies (which remain on your computer even after you close your browser) to store information that may speed up your use of our website for any of your future visits to the website. We may also use session cookies (which no longer remain after you end your browsing session) to help manage the display and presentation of information on the website.
You may refuse to use cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of the website.
By using our website and not opting-out of cookies, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Some of our websites and services may include functionality to enable information sharing via third party social media applications, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. These social media applications may collect and use information regarding your use of our websites. Any personal information that you provide via such social media applications may be collected and used by members of that social media application separate to us and are subject to the privacy policies of the relevant companies that provide the applications. We do not have control over, or responsibility for, those companies or their use of your information.
Any personal information that you provide on our social media feature may be shared with other users of that social media feature (unless otherwise stated at the point of collection), over whom we may have limited or no control.
THIRD PARTY WEBSITES
Sometimes our website contains links to other websites, for your convenience and information. When you access a website other than crichtonand.co, C&C is not responsible for the privacy practices of that site. We suggest that you review the privacy policies of each site you visit.
Making a complaint
If you wish to make a complaint about how C&C handles your personal information, please contact us setting out your complaint in writing, and forward it to our Privacy Officer, using the contact details below.
We will deal with all requests for access to personal information or complaints as quickly as possible and will endeavour to get back to you within a reasonable timeframe.
Additional Information & How to Contact C&C
This C&C Privacy Policy may change from time to time. Any updated policies will be published on C&C's website. The C&C Privacy Policy will be made available to anyone who requests it, whether at our offices or by use of our website.
If you have any questions or comments about the C&C Privacy Policy, please set out your request in writing, and forward this to our Privacy Officer, Amie Crichton, using the contact details below.
e: admin@crichtonand.co a: Crichton & Co Legal, Suite 122, Mezzanine, 39 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000 m: +61 418 455 554
ANCLC Pty Ltd t/a Crichton & Co Legal ABN 46 629 274 862 · Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation
Legal
Terms of Use.
These terms of use apply to your use of Crichton & Co Legal's website. By using the C&C website, you agree to be bound by these terms of use. We may amend these terms of use at any time. Your continued use of the C&C website is deemed to be acceptance of the terms of use in place, as amended, at any point in time.
'Crichton & Co Legal', 'C&C', 'we', 'us' and 'our' mean ANCLC Pty Ltd t/a Crichton & Co Legal ACN 629 274 862 of Suite 122, Mezzanine, 39 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000.
Not Legal Advice
The content of C&C's website is general information on legal subject matters. The content of the C&C website is not legal advice. If you want legal advice, you must seek specific advice tailored to your circumstances. You can not rely on the content of this website as legal advice.
Currency
This website and its content should be viewed as current only as at the time of first publication.
Limited Liability
C&C makes no warranties or representations about this website or any of its content. We are not responsible to you or anyone else for any direct or consequential loss suffered in connection with the use of this website. We exclude, to the extent permitted by law, any liability which may arise as a result of use of this website. By using C&C's website, you agree to indemnify C&C for any loss or liability arising out of your use of C&C's website.
Copyright
C&C owns the intellectual property, including the copyright, in all content of C&C's website.
We are happy for you to link to our site, however it is your responsibility to maintain the currency of links. We reserve the right to deny any person permission to link to C&C's site.
If you wish to reproduce any of C&C's content, you must first request our permission. If we provide permission, you must give appropriate attribution to the author, C&C and identify the date of first publication.
Third Party Links
Any linked sites on the C&C website are not under the control of C&C. We do not take responsibility for the content in, or currency of, any externally linked sites. The inclusion of any link within our site does not imply endorsement by C&C of the linked site, nor does it suggest any relationship with any organisation linked.
Governing Law
This website and its use are governed by the laws of New South Wales.
ANCLC Pty Ltd t/a Crichton & Co Legal ABN 46 629 274 862 · Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation
