Richard Windeyer was born in 1868 in New South Wales into a family with a strong legal pedigree. His father was William Charles Windeyer, a judge and former Attorney-General of the colony, and from an early age Richard was immersed in the culture of law, learning its discipline and traditions through both formal study and familial example. He was educated at The King’s School, Parramatta, and later at the University of Sydney, where he studied arts and law. He was called to the New South Wales Bar in the late 1880s and soon developed a reputation for careful legal reasoning and understated eloquence.

Though he practised across a wide range of subjects, Richard Windeyer was particularly respected for his work in constitutional law, land tenure, and the emerging field of Aboriginal legal rights, long before such issues were widely understood. He appeared in several complex and often politically charged cases involving land rights and Crown obligations, and his arguments in these matters demonstrated not only legal rigour but a degree of moral awareness uncommon for the time.

Windeyer was known for his quiet manner and his scholarly approach to advocacy. He rarely sought the spotlight, preferring to work through the force of his written submissions and the clarity of his argument. Judges appreciated the precision of his analysis, and clients trusted his sense of balance and judgment. Though not a flamboyant figure in the courtroom, he was widely regarded as one of the most dependable and thoughtful barristers of his era.

In addition to his legal work, Windeyer was active in historical and literary circles, and he believed strongly in the role of the law as a civilising influence in society. He was deeply interested in the legal status of Indigenous Australians and contributed early thinking to questions of sovereignty, occupancy, and the doctrine of terra nullius, though the legal system at the time was not prepared to grapple with these issues fully.

Richard Windeyer died in 1959, having lived through a period of vast change in Australian legal and social life. His career remains an example of steady excellence and of principled advocacy in areas of law that would only much later come to occupy national attention.