Nicola Gobbo was a young and vulnerable barrister "looking for a way out" of dealing with gangland clients like Tony Mokbel when police saw an opportunity, her lawyers claim.
At 25-years-old, the youngest woman in Victoria to sign the bar roll, she suddenly found herself "neck deep" in the underworld and feared for her personal safety and wellbeing.
"She was under enormous pressure and looking for a way out, a hand of friendship," her junior barrister Jessie Taylor told the Supreme Court on Monday.
“This was a prized catch for those seeking to dismantle the gangland wars.
"She asked police for help, they laid the bait ... and she started talking."
Ms Gobbo's senior barrister, Tim Tobin KC, said as the body count for Melbourne's notorious gangland wars continued to mount in the early 2000s, with "considerable pressure" heaped onto detectives.
The killings kept coming and they were not getting solved, so detectives became desperate, and caution and practice protocols went by the wayside, he said.
"The plaintiff became Mokbel’s golden girl just as their criminal empire was taking off," he told the court.
He said she had no idea she was registered as a police informant twice earlier.
This included in 1995 when her housemate was arrested for drug trafficking, and again in 1999 when she provided police information about her employer defrauding Legal Aid.
She found out more than two decades later, during a royal commission.
Ms Taylor accused Victoria Police of "grooming" Ms Gobbo when they took her on as a police informant, by exploiting her vulnerabilities and their position to use her as a source.
She said officers made promises to Ms Gobbo that could not be kept, including that they would protect her and her identity would never be revealed.
"That failure over a significant period of time can only be described as negligence of a high order," Ms Taylor said.
"The immediacy and flagrancy with which those promises were broken is quite breathtaking."
When she became their source for a third time, in 2005, she was forthcoming, open and unfiltered, providing police an "overwhelming" volume of information and intelligence, Ms Taylor said.
Police continued to use Ms Gobbo as a source for another four years knowing the danger to her.
"The individuals Ms Gobbo was connected to had a proven capacity to murder and there was no doubt in anyone's minds that she could be murdered," Ms Taylor said.
She said in the past five years Ms Gobbo had been painted as "controlling, malicious and manipulative".
"But the evidence in this case will not bear that out," Ms Taylor said.
"Our case is not that our client has never put a foot wrong, far from it.
"But this court will hear evidence about the power dynamic between a lonely, isolated young woman and the mighty machinery of the state's police force when they each have something to offer."
Ms Gobbo is seeking damages from the state of Victoria in the judge-alone civil trial, which began on Monday.
She claims officers put her safety at risk in using her as a police informer, and her unmasking as Informer 3838 and "Lawyer X" had damaged her health and career.
The gangland barrister-turned-informant is expected to give evidence on Wednesday, but will do so from a remote location and her image will be shielded from public view.
Once Ms Gobbo's team have finished their evidence, Victoria Police will deliver their defence case.
Ms Gobbo was registered three times as a police informer in the 1990s and early 2000s, when she gave handlers information about underworld figures, including those she represented legally.
A royal commission found Ms Gobbo's position as both informer and barrister could have affected more than 1000 convictions.
Former clients Tony Mokbel, Faruk Orman and Zlate Cvetanovski have successfully had convictions overturned since her role was uncovered in March 2019.
