Nathan Chalmers is a commercial and construction lawyer whose work sits at the public-private interface, on infrastructure, procurement, and regulated risk matters where legal, commercial, and practical considerations all have to land together.
He is currently Senior Legal Counsel at Brisbane City Council, where he leads the Litigation, Risk, and Enforcement team, a unit of close to twenty legal professionals managing disputes, regulatory matters, and operational advice for Australia’s largest local government. The work spans the full range of Council’s operational and commercial activity, including matters of significant public interest that are regularly reported in the Queensland press. Prior to that role, Nathan led the Commercial team at Council, advising the groups responsible for delivering major infrastructure, property, and economic development projects across the city.
Before moving in-house, Nathan spent more than a decade in private practice across top-tier and specialist boutique firms, focused on construction, energy, and infrastructure. His work spanned commercial advisory, contract negotiation, drafting, and complex dispute resolution including ADR, litigation, and commissions of inquiry, for both domestic and international clients. Over that period he worked for project teams or as in-house counsel on secondment across some of the most significant resource and infrastructure undertakings in the country, including major bauxite, copper, and uranium operations, a Commonwealth Games, an airport runway delivery, and a public commission of inquiry into a major dam.
Nathan’s cross-sector experience in top-tier private practice, specialist boutique, in-house government, and secondments into major project and event delivery, has shaped a practice oriented to problem-solving rather than doctrinal advice alone, and to translating between legal, commercial, and operational perspectives.
Outside of work, Nathan is Deputy Chair of the Queensland Law Society’s Construction and Infrastructure Law Policy Committee and serves as a volunteer firefighter with the Rural Fire Service in Freestone, Queensland.