Gary commenced work as a lawyer in the area of local government and planning law prior to the commencement of the 1979 environmental and planning law legislation and has worked in that area ever since. He has witnessed and participated in all its changes over 35 years.
He is considered by his associates and the profession to be a pre-eminent expert in the jurisdiction. Gary has conducted, advised and strategised over one thousand cases in the Land and Environment Court in all its classes and jurisdictional divisions.
Gary heads up a team of talented and dedicated lawyers and is committed to providing top-line advice at all levels of planning and environmental law, from the billion dollar venture to the backyard addition. His focus has been on building a team of lawyers with a skill base that he believes is difficult to match for competence and value in the jurisdiction.
Gary’s success was professionally recognised at a relatively young age by the planning, architecture and legal profession by his appointment as President of the Environmental Planning and Law Association. This post required some heavy lifting and consulting with government and the judiciary with respect to planning law reform in the Land and Environment Court and to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act.
Fundamentally, Gary’s view is that teamwork with clients, good evidence, great environmental outcomes and financial success for clients are intricately linked.
It’s not just knowledge of the law, but using decades of experience and its implementation that is the key to success.
Gary considers that one of the best ways of staying out of Court is to understand what is necessary to win and conduct successful litigation. With that skill, one is able to prepare for and mediate a very large number of matters. Gary’s experience is that the prospects of settling a matter increase exponentially when you are prepared and your opposing practitioner understands that there will be no strategic advantage in running a lengthy and unnecessary set of proceedings.
Over his long career, Gary considers the truly enjoyable moments to be when he gets to service and advise a client with real problems and then fix them. After all, that is why he did law in the first place.
Gary has acted for a variety of different councils over many years and has a unique knowledge of their needs and demands. He still acts for a number of particular councils with which he has had a long association on more difficult and complex litigious and strategic issues. Gary prides himself on the contribution he has made over the decades to preserve and uphold the heritage and conservation values in Balmain and the Leichhardt Municipal Council area generally.
Gary is a great communicator and is well respected by the Land and Environment Court and by practitioners working in the field for his straight-shooting and no-nonsense advocacy. It is probably one of the reasons why in the latter half of 2014 he received the award for “outstanding contribution to the profession” by the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors of New South Wales.
Gary’s focus has always been on working in a team and one of the strong reasons for merger with his brother, Mark Green, and Verekers Lawyers was to enable a cross-pollination of the strong commercial, litigation and property expertise of Verekers Lawyers with the experience of Pikes Lawyers.
Robert Tassell, an accredited litigation specialist, has helped Gary in a number of defamation matters and Kim Probert, an accredited property specialist, has solved many a property query and provided advice for Gary’s planning and development clients.
The two teams now make the complete package.
Gary has been named as a recommended planning lawyer in both the 2015 and 2016 edition of Doyle's Guide to Leading Lawyers.