The name was released on Friday afternoon after an order in the Court of Appeal suppressing her identity was lifted.

Former detective and Wangaratta businessman Paul Dale was one of the people caught up with Ms Gobbo over the years, as she became a police informant while working for members of Melbourne criminal underworld.

Lawyer X tried to implicate Mr Dale, a former drug squad detective, in the murder of police informant Terence Hodson and Hodson’s wife, Christine, in 2004.

He told The Border Mail in December it was appalling for Victoria Police to use her for information.

Murder charges laid against Mr Dale were withdrawn when underworld killer Carl Williams was himself murdered in jail in 2010 and Ms Gobbo refused to give evidence against him at trial.

“I was there knowing full well that this evidence should never have been allowed to be given,” he said.

“And in the end, something stopped her."

Ms Gobbo was one of the youngest women ever admitted to the bar when she became a barrister in 1998 at the age of 25.

She went on to make a name for herself by representing a rogue's gallery of Melbourne's underworld, including Williams.

Ms Gobbo, who became a solicitor in 1996, was first registered as a police informer in 1995 and again from 2005 to 2009 at the height of the gangland war.

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