For Maria Tsikaris her new role on the bench is a departure from the years she worked as a barrister and presented cases on her clients’ behalf before a judge. It is a position that requires her to be impartial, fair, giving everyone the opportunity to state their case and to listen to them.

“I was approached and was offered the appointment. I had not ever thought it would be an option” said Judge Tsikaris who has practised law since 1990.

“I will be in the Common Law Division and will decide injury cases as well as all types of work cover, transport accidents, general public liability matters,” she told Neos Kosmos.

Judge Tsikaris was born in Greece. Her parents, Anastasios and Arete, who were from the Trikala region near Meteora, migrated to Australia when she was two years old and her brother, Steven was four.

“We came to Melbourne and my dad worked at General Motors Holden in Port Melbourne. Her mother worked in a cake shop.

“We initially lived in Malvern and moved to Murrumbeena in 1974 where my parents still love.”

She graduated from Murrumbeena High School, knowing for an early age that she wanted to be a lawyer.

“As a child of immigrants, I was always interpreting for my parents at the banks, and doctors, and even then I was an advocate. Many first-generation migrants did not have English and their children once they started learning English, were intermediaries. My brother and I both acted in this way and were not different to Greek and other migrant communities

“I loved watching legal crime shows on television such as Petrocelli and Paper Chase ( a TV series about students studying law at a top university with an imperious John Houseman as Professor Kingsfield).”

During her school years, she was also involved in the Trikallini social group and helped organise youth club events as well. She studied Modern Greek and her daughter Kyra is also studying the language.

“Learning the language has been important to me as it connects me to my background and culture. ”

After school, she went straight into Monash University inn 1984 where she completed a double degree in Arts and Law. “Learning the language has been important to me as it connects me to my background and culture. ”

She was a member of the university’s Greek club and of NUGAS (National Union of Greek-Australian Students).

After graduating in 1989, she joined law firm Clements Hutchins and Co the following year to focus on insurance law, public liability and personal injury litigation.
In 1994 she went to work Dunhill Madden Butler and in 1998 to Deacons and was a partner in both law firms from 1998 to 2002.

Between 2003 and 2005 when she joined the Victorian Bar, Judge Tsikaris served as a senior legal adviser to medical panels and gave expert legal advice to medical professionals.

“In 2005, I made the decision to go to the Bar and I read with my mentor, I was on a two-and-a-half month course and over the next nine months I worked with my mentor in his chambers as he guided me in the role of presenting cases in court as a barrister,” she said.

“When you sit in court and run cases (as a barrister), you gain an appreciation of what judges do. But I also had the opportunity (before her appointment to the Bench) to sit with judges and observe and pick up on what they do.

“The appointment represents an enormous responsibility to the people who will appear in front of me. I am being entrusted with the responsibility of making decisions. It is an honour and privilege I am excited to start,” she told Neos Kosmos.

Judge Tsikaris is married to Paul Gianasmidis. They have a daughter, Kyra who is 17.