Wanderlust lawyer settles for Tasmanian acreage

Insurance lawyer Steven Smith is a well-travelled man.

He was born in Dundee, Scotland, grew up in England, and lived in New South Wales and the Northern Territory, before finally settling in Tasmania.

Steve, a Special Counsel with Hunt & Hunt in Hobart, has just become Tasmania’s AILA President.

His UK law degree was followed by additional training in Sydney, but he resigned from his firm there after being held up at gunpoint in Parramatta.

That frightening episode prompted a sea change to Darwin – initially because his brother was travelling to the NT capital en route to India - and Steve fell in love with the place.

But he also fell in love with his Tasmanian-born wife, Min, who was then working in the NT as a project manager. She warned on only their second or third date that if the relationship became serious, a move to her home state was likely.

Steve spent a decade in Darwin and became a partner with his firm, but the lure of the island state was strong and eight years ago the Smiths made the big shift.

Today the couple has three daughters, Ella, 10; Ruby, 7; and Alice, 5. The Smith family shares a 1.6 hectare farm at Allens Rivulet, just 20 minutes’ drive south of Hobart, with orchards and a menagerie of sheep and chooks.

There’s a pet turkey, named Durkeen – the turkey queen – and a stray turkey that just flew in. But Steve won’t let the children name that one, in case it is destined for the pot.

Steve enjoyed the Darwin heat, the predictability of the seasons – just wet and dry - and the ample opportunities for fishing and other outdoor activities.

In Tassie he must contend with four seasons in a day and chilly winters, but jests that he is in no danger from tropical cyclones.

His outdoor activities are now mowing, pruning, digging and “shuttling kids to and from their activities”.

Steve had joined the AILA committee in the NT and, when he began his new job at Hunt & Hunt in 2008, it “seemed logical” to join the Tasmanian committee.

Ascending to the president’s role was not an ambition, more a job he “stumbled into”, when the immediate past president, loss adjuster David Farmer, no longer wanted to continue.

No radical changes are planned because Steve aims to continue the “good work” of his predecessors. He would like to see more insurers’ employees participate in AILA activities.

A breakfast meeting will be one innovation to test the membership’s enthusiasm for insurance law education over bacon and eggs. “I’m not a morning person,” he admitted. “But we want to give it a shot.”

Steve appreciates that AILA offers the ability for lawyers, insurers and brokers to communicate openly about their roles within the industry and that facilitates a greater understanding of industry participants’ disparate functions. “We’re educated [via AILA meetings] about legal principles, but also the realities of the roles we all play.”

Steve says no other group, in his view, fulfils that important function in the insurance industry.

While family life on the farm sounds idyllic, there have been challenges, too. Three years ago Steve was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But the good news is that, after five months of debilitating chemotherapy, he has recovered.

Steve practices in the areas of workers’ compensation, building disputes, personal injury, public liability, occupiers and public liability, motor vehicle accidents, contractual disputes, professional indemnity, product liability and medical negligence.