Andrew Higgins
Andrew Higgins is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Adrian Zuckerman. His research is focused on the attorney-client privilege and in particular its use and abuse in corporate and governmental contexts. Andrew undertook the BCL at Oxford in 2004-05 where he received a distinction (first class honors) and was then awarded a Rae & Edith Bennett Travelling Scholarship from the University of Melbourne to pursue a doctorate at Oxford.
Previously Andrew worked in Australia as a litigation lawyer in mass tort litigation including tobacco, asbestos and environmental litigation. Andrew played a crucial role in uncovering evidence of British American Tobacco’s ‘document retention’ practices, and its policy of systematically destroying sensitive documents for the purposes of preventing their disclosure in court. These revelations led to criminal investigations in Australia (still ongoing), and criminal and civil law reforms in Victoria and New South Wales regarding document management practices and lawyers’ obligations when advising on them. Andrew also briefed the US Department of Justice on the evidence of BAT’s document destruction, which became a central complaint of the US Federal Government in its RICO Anti-Trust litigation against the tobacco industry in the District Court of Columbia. At the time Andrew was only an articled clerk, and was nominated for the Australian Plaintiff Lawyers Association’s ‘Civil Justice’ Award. He has given occasional guest lectures at the University of Melbourne on Civil Procedure.