Maurice Thompson

Maurice Thompson is a Partner and HFW’s ‘Global Head of Litigation Funding’. With over 30 years’ experience, he specialises in complex, multi-jurisdictional disputes for clients in the shipping, insurance, oil & gas, natural resources, commodities, offshore projects and aviation sectors.

He has helped clients with interests in some of the largest LNG gas projects in Australasia and internationally, including Ruwais and Das Island in the UAE, the JPDA in the Timor Sea, ICHTHYS, Wheatstone, Gorgon, Bayu-Udan, Greater Sunrise, the Australian North West Shelf and the Otway Basin. He has advised the full gamut of participants, ranging from the operators and JV participants, contractors and subcontractors including drillers, accommodation vessels, offtake vessels, OSVs, and sales contract entities, as well as Governments and regulators. This work has involved advising on regulatory and offshore risk analysis, and maritime, aviation and sub-sea legal regimes including their overlap with drones and ROVs. He has held the role of external legal advisor on the global Emergency Oil Spill Response Team for BHP Billiton (i.e. for APAC) and Saudi Aramco (i.e. for MENA).

In his non-contentious experience, Maurice has acted for most of the world’s major commodity trading houses drafting many of their commercial documents and international sales contracts, off-take agreements, charterparties and COAs with respect to wide array of energy, hard and soft commodities.

He has co-authored two leading international legal textbooks: “Drone Law and Policy: Global Development, Risks, Regulation and Insurance” (Routledge 2021); and “The Global Insurance Market and Change: Emerging Technologies, Risks and Legal Challenges” (Routledge 2023: Lloyds Insurance Law Library Series: Winner of the 2024 BILA Book Prize).

Maurice holds an LLB (Bond, Australia); an LLM (Shipping)(Hons) (UCT, South Africa); an LLM (Admiralty)(Distinction) (Tulane, USA); and has done post-graduate study in International Trade Law at Southampton University (UK) and the University of Melbourne (Australia). He is admitted to practice in Australia, England and Wales and worked in Dubai (1998-2003) and Shanghai (2006) as a maritime and trade law expert.