Mitchell Cleaver

During my time at Oxford I was a College Lecturer at Corpus Christi College where I taught Trusts and Land Law on the undergraduate course, and Advanced Property and Trusts on the BCL.

My doctorate was entitled The Equitable Lien: Credit, Security, and Priority in English Law and Economy, 1673-1925. It was an historical study of the origin and development of equitable property rights, focusing on their relationship to the adjudication of complex problems of credit, security, and priority in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its central theme was the so-called ‘propertisation’ or ‘proprietisation’ of equities (broadly, the historical process whereby mere entitlements to seek judicial remedies have sometimes become associated with an ‘equitable interest’ in an asset or fund, an interest with features analogous to but distinct from those of legal property rights). The dissertation was supervised by Professor Joshua Getzler and Professor Ben McFarlane, and examined by Professor Michael Lobban and Professor Charles Mitchell.

I have now returned to legal practice as a Senior Associate at Allens in Australia, where I am based in the tax team. I also have a broader commercial practice, with a particular focus on equity and trusts.

Alongside my role at Allens, I am an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, having previously been a Sessional Lecturer in Equity at the University of Sydney (2016–2019), a Teaching Fellow in Equity & Trusts at the University of New South Wales (2019–2020), and a Tipstaff (researcher) to the Hon. Justice Julie Ward, the Chief Judge in Equity and a Judge of Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (2017). I have published on equity and property law issues in Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly and the Journal of Banking and Finance Law and Practice.