Mr Adair Donaldson

Photo of Mr Adair Donaldson.
Mr Adair Donaldson

Adair Donaldson is a lawyer and educator. After 25 years as a partner or director of law firms, Adair is now focusing his expertise on assisting people to move from the challenges of the past to the opportunities of the future. Specifically, Adair is helping individuals and organisations to engage, listen, communicate and discover solutions themselves in order to resolve conflict, address social issues, and drive cultural change.

Throughout his legal career Adair has been involved in a wide range of matters, including advocating for survivors of child abuse, assisting Veterans, negotiating Australia’s first PFAS ground water contamination settlement, and assisting a group of former child gymnasts advocating for change in the wake of the Athlete A documentary that led to the establishment of the restorative justice scheme by the Australian Sports Commission in 2022.

In 2007, in response to seeing too many young lives ruined by poor decisions, Adair developed his first educational resource for school leavers that aimed to educate them about the law and the consequences of ignoring the law. After 17 years this has evolved into education, consultancy and advocacy work on a national level to sporting bodies, peak bodies regarding gendered violence, schools, universities and workplaces. The focus is always on the law. The training is interactive, entertaining and most importantly, thought provoking.

Adair resolutely believes if we are going to have a chance of reducing the horrendous statistics in relation to harassment and violence toward women—amongst other issues—we need to educate young men and women about the law—the foundation all other training should rest on.

In relation to his education endeavours, Adair’s work in this space has been widely acknowledged. In 2020 he was retained by the Queensland Law Society to write and produce their sexual harassment resource, which is now being used by all law societies in Australia.

He continues to be an advisor to the NRL, educating elite athletes in relation to legal issues associated with welfare and education. The work he has done in this space has been recognised in the UK where he has been engaging with elite athlete services and educators.

Adair is also regularly asked to be a keynote speaker, particularly in relation to gendered violence and employment related issues.