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Herbert Geer

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ5734177
Source-derived summary

Herbert Geer was an Australian commercial law firm with offices located in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

History

The law firm of Herbert Geer was founded on 26 January 1939 when Keith Geer commenced his sole practice in Bank Place, off Collins Street, Melbourne. After the disruption of the Second World War, Keith Geer resumed his practice and was joined in 1946 by Geoffrey Herbert, who continued to operate from his office in Black Rock.

The firm was known as Herbert & Geer and was largely a conveyancing practice. In 1950 the partnership expanded further with the addition of Eric Rundle and in 1960 it assumed the name, Herbert Geer & Rundle. In 1962 the Melbourne office relocated to 113 William Street, taking with it a total of ten partners and staff and three residents in the office at Black Rock. At about this time the firm purchased an office in Niddrie at the request of the Bank of New South Wales, for professional expansion in this area. This office was sold in 1988. Between 1962 and 1970, three small practices were absorbed into Herbert Geer & Rundle; Farmer & Ramsay, Williams & Matthews and the office of Cyril Brooks.

The firm achieved publicity in the early 1970s by handling the defendant's litigation for all workers' compensation claims arising from the Westgate bridge collapse.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Herbert Geer” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Herbert, Geer and Open-knowledge, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 1946, 1950, 1960—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Herbert, Geer and Open-knowledge is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5734177. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1946, 1950 and 1960.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Herbert Geer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Herbert Geer primary sources, Herbert Geer archive and Herbert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Herbert Geer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.