Iain McLaren

Special Counsel | Melbourne

+61 3 8644 3557 imclaren@hwle.com.au

Iain McLaren is a Special Counsel in HWL Ebsworth’s national commercial group, based in Melbourne. 

Iain specialises in information technology law (Cyber, FinTech, MedTech, LegalTech, AI), privacy, information security, data protection, intellectual property, and general commercial contracting. Iain has over 20 years of experience in private practice and in-house. In addition to working in private practice, Iain previously worked in-house at ANZ Bank and Australia Post (including for Bank@Post) focusing on technology, privacy, data, and financial services matters, at and Hewlett Packard, and on secondment at Energy Australia. 

Iain has computer science and information systems degrees, continues to build technology services and systems, and actively engages with the information security community.  In a previous role, Iain led the legal and service delivery teams at a law firm which implemented and built market-leading legal technology, contracting, and marketing solutions. 

Expertise

Experience

  • Multiple APRA regulated entities Advising entities including the 4 major Australian banks, and smaller Australian banks, in relation to various intellectual property, privacy, complex procurement, business process outsourcing, shared computing, and finance and workplace relations / human resources projects. 
  • Leading Australian financial services Advising banking, superannuation , insurance, and retirement solutions providers in relation to multiple outsourcing and insourcing agreement negotiations, providing privacy and intellectual property advice, and advising in relation to the (CPS 230) outsourcing of financial management services, various business process outsourcing and SaaS services, and the outsourcing of multiple critical finance systems to a single outsource provider.  
  • VicReturn (Victoria) and TasRecycle (Tasmania) Acting in relation to its setup and provisioning of Victoria’s and Tasmania’s Container Deposit Schemes, including in relation to VicReturn’s and TasRecycle’s intellectual property, privacy, technology, and confidentiality obligations, and Software as a Service (SaaS) services. 
  • Australia Post Providing Advice in relation to commercial, technology, and Bank@Post matters, transfers of cash, commercialisation of data, and data commercialisation privacy matters. 
  • A major Australian hospital group Advising in relation to the procurement of its cloud-based and on-premise Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems and other technology systems and services. 
  • Coles Acting in relation to the Ocado warehouse automation project. 
  • Multiple Australian banks Advising in relation to the setup and procurement of services in relation to Open Banking and Consumer Data Rights. 
  • A global technology service provider Providing Advice in relation to the negotiation of multiple Asia-Pacific and global technology and business process outsourcing agreements.