Full Profile
Simone is a recognised expert at the intersection of cyber risk, legal liability, and strategic risk management, with over 30 years of experience in both private and corporate legal practice. In May 2025, Simone joined Clyde & Co and now leads our Cyber, Media and Technology practice in Australia. Her expertise encompasses insurance law, risk management, professional liability, dispute resolution, and privacy law, with particular specialisation in supporting businesses' cyber resilience through legal advisory and education services.
Simone's deep expertise in cyber risk has been recognised through invitations to provide expert testimony to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (2024) and an expert report in multi-million dollar Supreme Court proceedings involving technology-enabled fraud. She is most proud of having educated more than 10,000 Australians about cyber risk through her innovative training programs.
Simone has acted for individuals and businesses impacted by cyber events and email fraud, including advising on and defending claims against professionals arising from cyber events, data breaches and email fraud; providing advice on policy coverage under cyber insurance policies; pursuing damages claims against managed service providers and other professional services firms; and advising organisations on uplifting their cyber resilience profile including through increased contractual protections.
Simone's insurance litigation experience spans her entire career. As the former Manager of Strategy & Innovation and Senior Claims Solicitor at a leading professional indemnity insurer for lawyers, she has deep expertise in professional indemnity law, having handled more than 2,000 professional indemnity notifications against law firms ranging from Australia's largest firms to hundreds of SMEs, and professional responsibility. In her strategic role, she had conduct of cases of most strategic importance to the claims portfolio, including High Court and appellate cases, and played a pivotal role in the company's innovative response to cyber risk, including launching a group cyber risk policy for more than 6,000 law firms.
Simone regularly presents to businesses on cyber risk, facilitates cyber incident tabletop exercises, and has been recognised with awards including the Innovator of the Year (Individual) Award at the Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards in 2022, and AGSM's prestigious Wanbil Lee Prize for Ethical Leadership in Business in 2016. She holds an MBA (Executive) from AGSM, a Master of Law & Management from AGSM/UNSW Law, and bachelor's degrees in Law and Arts from UNSW.
Her contributions to the industry include acting as Committee Member of the AILA Education Committee and Steering Committee Member of the Australian Society for Computers and the Law. Simone's online cyber education training programs have been licensed, distributed or endorsed by major industry bodies including the Legal Practitioners Liability Committee, PEXA the Law Society of South Australia, the Australian Institute of Conveyancers across multiple states and leading education provider Lumify
Simone has published numerous articles relating to cyber risk, professional duties and ethics, and AI governance.
Experience
Cyber Risk Leadership
- Simone led the NSW legal profession's response to emerging cyber threats during her tenure at Lawcover, establishing innovative risk management strategies and coordinating industry-wide responses. This included developing and implementing the company’s ground-breaking cyber risk strategy and orchestrating an innovative group cyber risk insurance solution covering 6,000+ law practices. She personally managed the early cases involving cyber events impacting law practices and authored many risk management publications on cyber risk for the NSW legal profession including in the Law Society of NSW Journal
Cyber Risk Advisory and Legal
- Acting for individuals and businesses in damages claims against legal advisors, real estate agents, managed services providers and social media companies where clients sustained losses from cyber events including ransomware, computer hacking, business email compromise, social media account takeover, social engineering and email-enabled fraud.
- Advising insureds in coverage disputes involving business email compromise and computer hacking claims.
- Successfully pursuing a substantial damages claim against a managed service provider following catastrophic losses from a ransomware event.
- Securing recovery of scam-related losses through complaints against financial services providers and claims against professional advisors and a high-end retailer.
- Providing pre-breach advisory work on cyber insurance coverage for a financial services utility and software provider.
- Delivering comprehensive cyber resilience programs including board, executive and all-staff training across multiple industries including a national sports organisation, the legal sector, property industry, medical research, care sector, hospitals and recruitment.
- Engaged to provide independent expert opinion in Supreme Court litigation involving allegations of email-enabled fraud, breach of trust and negligence against a solicitor and law firm where damages claimed exceeded $30 million.
Professional Indemnity Claims and Strategy
- Management of over 2,000 professional indemnity claims against law firms over a 20-year period, including High Court and Supreme Court appeals and cases of strategic significance such as Attwells v Jackson Lalic Lawyers Pty Ltd [2016] HCA 16, the leading case on advocates immunity in Australia.
- Management of cases involving most strategic importance to the claims portfolio, including appellate-level litigation with precedent value across the legal profession.
- Development of innovative insurance solutions expanding beyond traditional professional indemnity coverage into management liability and cyber risk protection.
- Leading stakeholder engagement with legal professional indemnity insurers, reinsurers, regulators, and professional bodies nationally.
