----- 4 stars ----- The Mysterious Lawyer X / California Sunday Magazine Nicola Gobbo defended Melbourne’s most notorious criminals at the height of a gangland war. They didn’t know she had a secret. [...] In a legal community featuring few prominent women attorneys, particularly defense barristers, Gobbo stood out by default. As her defense practice moved up the hierarchy of Melbourne’s underworld, she increasingly became a subject of the same press that greeted her clients outside the courtroom. By early 2002, that included Mokbel, who hired her while in jail on cocaine and amphetamine charges to advocate for his bail. In a clever legal maneuver, Gobbo convinced the judge that an ongoing corruption scandal in the police drug squad meant that Mokbel’s prosecution should be shelved. With his release on an AUD $1 million bond — complete with a provision allowing him to travel to Queensland for a lavish beach vacation — Gobbo’s public profile began to explode. She appeared in the city’s gossip pages, spotted wearing a sling after a gym accident, or on vacation buying rounds at the Hard Rock Cafe in Bali. She was also earning a reputation among both clients and cops as a formidable advocate. [...] Purana had arrested Williams in November 2003, after listening devices installed in his house captured him threatening a detective named Stuart Bateson, who’d been assigned to investigate him, and Bateson’s girlfriend. Gobbo appeared in court for Williams the following day, complaining that her client had been deprived of food, his antidepressants, and a change of clothing. His legal team then argued successfully for bail on the basis that the threats were a joke — Williams knew his house was bugged, they pointed out. Five days after Williams walked free, Gobbo showed up as a guest of honor at a lavish $150,000 christening he threw for his daughter at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. She was photographed in a low-cut cocktail dress standing between Williams and Benji Veniamin, the three of them beaming like old friends. She then took the stage alongside Williams and delivered a speech. “I’ve been asked to make a special thank-you that Carl could be with us tonight,” she said, and offered a mock toast to “the boys at Purana and, especially, Stuart Bateson.” By then, Gobbo’s gangland stature had earned her her own profile in the Herald Sun, headlined “Million-dollar eagle flies high.” “A formidable presence in impossibly short skirts, the blonde, blue-eyed barrister is fast becoming a legal celebrity,” the paper proclaimed. As often happened, even amid Gobbo’s colleagues, her legal prowess was downplayed in favor of stereotypes and snide asides. “But the niece of former governor Sir James Gobbo is described by a sibling as a one-person Salvation Army,” the paper added. “She spends time at weekends visiting clients in prison or on remand. However, she has managed to rile some of those in the police force who pay professionally when she succeeds.”
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----- 4 stars ----- The Mysterious Lawyer X / California Sunday Magazine Nicola Gobbo defended Melbourne’s most notorious criminals at the height of a gangland war. They didn’t know she had a secret. [...] In a legal community featuring few prominent women attorneys, particularly defense barristers, Gobbo stood out by default. As her defense practice moved up the hierarchy of Melbourne’s underworld, she increasingly became a subject of the same press that greeted her clients outside the courtroom. By early 2002, that included Mokbel, who hired her while in jail on cocaine and amphetamine charges to advocate for his bail. In a clever legal maneuver, Gobbo convinced the judge that an ongoing corruption scandal in the police drug squad meant that Mokbel’s prosecution should be shelved. With his release on an AUD $1 million bond — complete with a provision allowing him to travel to Queensland for a lavish beach vacation — Gobbo’s public profile began to explode. She appeared in the city’s gossip pages, spotted wearing a sling after a gym accident, or on vacation buying rounds at the Hard Rock Cafe in Bali. She was also earning a reputation among both clients and cops as a formidable advocate. [...] Purana had arrested Williams in November 2003, after listening devices installed in his house captured him threatening a detective named Stuart Bateson, who’d been assigned to investigate him, and Bateson’s girlfriend. Gobbo appeared in court for Williams the following day, complaining that her client had been deprived of food, his antidepressants, and a change of clothing. His legal team then argued successfully for bail on the basis that the threats were a joke — Williams knew his house was bugged, they pointed out. Five days after Williams walked free, Gobbo showed up as a guest of honor at a lavish $150,000 christening he threw for his daughter at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. She was photographed in a low-cut cocktail dress standing between Williams and Benji Veniamin, the three of them beaming like old friends. She then took the stage alongside Williams and delivered a speech. “I’ve been asked to make a special thank-you that Carl could be with us tonight,” she said, and offered a mock toast to “the boys at Purana and, especially, Stuart Bateson.” By then, Gobbo’s gangland stature had earned her her own profile in the Herald Sun, headlined “Million-dollar eagle flies high.” “A formidable presence in impossibly short skirts, the blonde, blue-eyed barrister is fast becoming a legal celebrity,” the paper proclaimed. As often happened, even amid Gobbo’s colleagues, her legal prowess was downplayed in favor of stereotypes and snide asides. “But the niece of former governor Sir James Gobbo is described by a sibling as a one-person Salvation Army,” the paper added. “She spends time at weekends visiting clients in prison or on remand. However, she has managed to rile some of those in the police force who pay professionally when she succeeds.”