Jacob Varghese is Chief Executive Officer at Maurice Blackburn. An experienced litigator, he leads Australia’s number one plaintiff law firm from its Melbourne office. Since becoming CEO in 2017 Jacob has led the development and implementation of a new strategy to strengthen the firm’s financial and business foundations. Together with an experienced and highly skilled leadership team, he has built a “one firm” organisational structure and culture around a shared ambition to widen access to justice on a scale with no precedent in Australia.
Jacob started his legal career in the medical negligence team at Maurice Blackburn in 2002. Leaving the firm a few years later to work as a political adviser and parliamentary researcher, he returned in 2006 to its pioneering class actions team.
Jacob established himself as one of the country’s top class actions lawyers and has run some of the firm’s biggest cases. Becoming a principal of the firm in 2011, his achievements include working on four shareholder class actions which each achieved settlements in excess of $100 million for shareholders, and leading the team that achieved Australia’s largest food safety class action settlement. Prior to taking up the CEO role, he established Maurice Blackburn’s Australian litigation funding business, which focuses on providing funding to parties involved in commercial disputes. He also led the firm’s social justice practice, where he contributed to important victories for the rights of some of the most vulnerable in our society, including acting for 109 babies of asylum seekers which resulted in the babies and their families being given visas and released from detention. Jacob chairs the Board of Per Capita, one of Australia’s leading policy think-tanks.