Legal services
The General Counsel’s Office is responsible for the provision of legal services to the University.
The General Counsel's Office (OGC) provides legal advice to the Council, the Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, senior executives and other officers of the University. OGC also coordinates any external legal services provided to the University. OGC does not provide advice to students or personal advice to staff.
Legal and registration details
Macquarie University is a public university and a statutory corporation incorporated under the Macquarie University Act (NSW) 1989. The governing body of Macquarie University is the University Council. Our ABNs are:
- Macquarie University: 90 952 801 237
- MQ Health Pty Limited: 46 141 203 125
Subpoenas
OGC has authority to accept service of documents on behalf of the University. Subpoenas to the University should be addressed to:
The Proper Officer
Macquarie University
Office of General Counsel
19 Eastern Road
Macquarie University NSW 2109
The University does not hold documents centrally. To best ensure your subpoena is complied with, please allow a minimum of 14 working days for the University to contact each relevant area to seek documents that fall within the scope of the subpoena. If the University is unable to produce the documents in time, OGC may contact you and seek an extension.
Please make the description of documents to be produced as specific as possible as this will ensure that the issuing party receives the documents required for the proceedings, without unnecessarily burdening the University by having to search for documents that are not required but are covered by an excessively general scope. This includes supplying the following where available:
- if a person is an employee, what their employee number is
- if a person is a student, what their student number is
- the person’s date of birth
- the time period relevant to the documents.
OGC does not accept service of subpoenas to attend to give evidence. Those subpoenas must be served directly on the individual required to give evidence. If the evidence required is in relation to a position a person holds at the University, then OGC may provide advice and assistance with complying or attending to give evidence. If the subpoena is not to produce documents but requires personal attendance to give evidence at court concerning a University matter and the evidence concerns your work or position at the University, please contact OGC who will advise you.
The purpose of conduct money is to provide the University with reasonable compensation for the cost of complying with a subpoena. Those costs include staff time in locating and searching records, the resources involved in copying documents and payment for delivery of documents to the appropriate court, tribunal or other recipient.
The University has assessed the minimum cost of handling a subpoena to be $100.00 and requests that this sum be made available upon service of any subpoena. Cheques or money orders should be made payable to ‘Macquarie University’. This minimum amount presumes that the search will not take any longer than two hours and the documents to be reviewed, copied and delivered will not be more than 100 pages. If the time involved and records located go beyond these presumptions, the University may contact you to discuss payment of additional costs.
The additional costs will be assessed as the following rates:
- professional staff time: $295 per hour
- administrative staff time: $75 per hour
- photocopying documents: $0.80 per page
- scanning documents: $0.10 per page