Joanne Poole

Professional Background

Joanne has appeared in the High Court of Australia, Victorian Court of Appeal, Victorian and Northern Territory Supreme Courts and Victorian County Court. Her experience includes advising and appearing in a wide range of matters such as murder trials, and matters involving deception, drug offences, sexual offences, WorkSafe prosecutions and also as counsel assisting in the Coroner’s Court. She has also acted in disciplinary proceedings. 

Joanne’s experience includes all stages of advocacy from bail applications to contested committal hearings, trials, pleas and appeal work. 

Joanne is currently junior prosecuting counsel in the trial of The Queen v Zachary Rolfe in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory.

Joanne is on the Victoria Legal Aid Preferred Trial Counsel List.

Recent matters include:

• The Queen v Zachary Rolfe (murder trial, Supreme Court Northern Territory)
• DPP v Lanciana [2021] (armed robbery, County Court trial)
• Gioffre v The Queen [2020] VSCA 177 (sentence appeal)
• Grimanis v DPP [2020] VCC 908 (application for leave to appeal conviction)
• DPP v Barbara [2020] VCC 1159 (driving - negligently causing serious injury)
• DPP v Murdoch [2020] VSC 244 (murder, intentionally causing serious injury)
• Abdirahman v The Queen [2020] VSCA 87 (sentence appeal)
• Zarghami v The Queen [2020] VSCA 74 (sentence appeal)
• CDPP v Mamosi [2020] (County Court trial – forced marriage)
• DPP v Drake [2019] VSCA 293 (Director’s appeal, first standard sentence appeal in rape matter, appeared for Respondent, appeal dismissed)
• DPP v Le [2019] VSCA 258 (Director’s appeal, conduct endangering life, appeared for Respondent, appeal dismissed)
• DPP v Madina & Douglas (a Pseudonym) [2019] VSCA 73 (armed robbery and money laundering - interlocutory appeal, County Court trial)

Prior to coming to the Bar, Joanne worked with top-tier commercial law firms in Melbourne (Clayton Utz) and in Asia (Herbert Smith), specialising in white collar crime and regulatory matters. She also worked with Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong focusing on regional regulatory affairs and compliance, where her responsibilities included managing regulatory audits across Asia and advising in relation to compliance policies, particularly anti-money laundering.

On her return from Hong Kong to Melbourne, Joanne worked as a solicitor with private criminal law firm Balmer & Associates, appearing regularly as a solicitor advocate in the Magistrates’, Children’s and County Courts. 

Joanne is a member of Crockett Chambers. She read with Justin Hannebery QC. Her senior mentor is Ian Freckleton QC.