Nicole Lawless is the Executive Director of Legal Services at the Health Care Complaints Commission and commenced at the Commission in October 2021. Nicole also holds the statutory role of the Director of Proceedings.

Nicole was admitted as a solicitor in 2002. Prior to join the Commission, Nicole was the NSW Deputy Ombudsman, where she led the Complaints and Investigations Branch. Nicole previously worked in the NSW Ombudsman’s Office as a legal advisor and Counsel Assisting the Ombudsman. Nicole has also held roles as a prosecutor at the NSW DPP, as the Deputy Director of the Criminal Law Review Division in the NSW Attorney General’s Department, as a policy advisor in the Department of Premier and Cabinet on the prevention of violence against women and heading up the legal and strategy team representing the Department of Family and Community Services in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Nicole holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Laws, a Post Graduate Diploma (Forensic Psychology) as well as a Master of Laws in human rights and is a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW.