May 2025 NSW Bar Katrina Dawson Award

The NSW Bar Association was delighted to announce the May 2025 recipient of the Katrina Dawson Award: Haiqiu Zhu. Haiqiu won the University Medal in Law in 2020 at the University of Sydney. She then completed a Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford University. Haiqiu has a passion for advocacy and hopes to use her skills not only to support the community with this work, but also to inspire other young female lawyers.

Haiqiu was admitted as a solicitor in April 2021, having studied a combined Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Sydney, graduating in 2020 with the University Medal in Law. Subsequently, in 2022 and 2023 she read for the Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford.

During her time as a law student, she balanced studies with a diverse set of extracurriculars, successfully representing the University of Sydney at various intervarsity, national and international mooting competitions, and was a member of Oxford University’s Varsity-winning Competition Dance team.

Since graduating in 2020, Haiqiu has worked as a solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills in the litigation team and as a Tipstaff/Associate to the Hon Justice Payne of the NSW Court of Appeal from 2021 to 2022.

Given her long-held passion for advocacy, Haiqiu looks forward to joining the Bar where she hopes to use her skills and experience to serve the community. She also hopes to be able to use her position to support other women to realise their aspirations in their legal careers, and to foster their interest and enthusiasm in advocacy.