Ron Tait, barrister Peter Rosenberg, Francine McNiff, Brett Tait and solicitor Caroline Tait outside Melbourne's Supreme Court for Brett's admission to practice ceremony. Credit:Tait family She faxed it (she didn't do email, or computers in general) to her friend and solicitor, Ron Tait. In her later years, Ms McNiff lived in a modest 1970s-style brown brick unit in a south-eastern Melbourne suburb, and had driven a 30-year-old Mercedes. She wasn't into travel or dining out. But in fact, she was wealthy, owning 20 houses and flats in Melbourne and Shepparton. She had no children or partner and had carefully thought about how to direct her money for good. Before she died, she arranged to donate $4 million to Melbourne University, to fund a chair in criminology and a chair in human rights.

Solicitor Ron Tait (right) was a long-time friend and associate of Francine McNiff. His son Brett (left), also a solicitor, was mentored by Francine. Credit:Eddie Jim And on Monday, Monash University Vice Chancellor Professor Margaret Gardner will announce that Ms McNiff bequeathed her remaining estate of $3.8 million to her alma mater, Monash University. It is Monash's biggest bequest from an alumnus. Of that, $2 million will establish a Francine McNiff Chair in Criminal Jurisprudence. The unit in Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs where millionaire barrister Francine McNiff lived before her 2015 death. Credit:Eddie Jim And $1.8 million will support two PhD students from disadvantaged backgrounds annually to study criminology.

Ron Tait, a friend of Ms McNiff from her time studying law at Monash from 1966, says she stood out for her intellect, her red hair, her vivacity and as one of the few female students. Francine McNiff, pictured in The Age in 1983, after becoming the first woman appointed to a judicial post in Victoria. Credit:Fairfax Photographic After finishing her degree in 1971, she lectured at Monash for 10 years, earning a Master of Laws in 1978. In 1983, age 35, she became the first Victorian woman appointed to a judicial post when made a children's court stipendiary magistrate. She became a criminal barrister in 1987, specialising in sex crime cases.

For seven years, from 2002, she mentored Ron Tait's solicitor son Brett, who was Ms McNiff's associate in many court cases. Brett remembers her talking strategy at cafes during lunch breaks as she chain smoked menthol cigarettes and sipped black tea with lemon. "She would never eat lunch during a trial," he says. Ms McNiff was also a "technophobe" who preferred to use a typewriter and a fax machine. "She wouldn't have a mobile phone so her clerk got her a pager. She would handwrite on stuff you sent her, and send it back," he says, although she wanted a computer towards the end.

Ron says she was respected by all her clients, even underworld figures. He remembers talking to her outside the County Court in William Street one morning in 2004 when notorious criminal Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin​ approached her. "Veniamin said: 'Hi, Miss NcNiff, how are you?'" Ron says. "To which she replied: 'Fine, Benji, how are you?'" Hours later, Veniamin was shot dead in self defence by gangland identity Mick Gatto.

About six months ago, a woman whom Ms McNiff had successfully defended in the early 1990s on a murder charge (she was acquitted) asked Ron how Ms McNiff was. When told she had passed away, the woman burst into tears, Ron says. Brett Tait says Ms McNiff could, at first, come across as a cold person. "But once you got to know her she was a very warm person. Just extremely private," Brett says. "She didn't socialise. She had a very small group of very close people around her who would do anything for her. "I count myself as one of them."

Ron believes her Monash days in the 1960s were happy ones. The university comprised a much smaller number of buildings surrounded by paddocks, and the law faculty was a close-knit community at a time of anti-Vietnam war protests, when students would hang out at the "Nott" pub and the uni's sole "caf". When he acted as a solicitor in court Ron says "Francine was my criminal barrister of choice, because she was so good. Because her knowledge of the law, of the rules of evidence and whatnot, was spot on." A desperate judge once had his associate discreetly ask her to help write his "charge" to the jury – the speech summing up the evidence – towards the end of a sex crime trial that she was not involved in. She declined. Ron says the bequest to Monash made him smile, given Ms McNiff's terse death notice and no-frills send-off – six people watched her coffin being lowered at Brighton Cemetery. "These scholarship students, their lives will be changed forever because of what she's done," he says.

"Her name and her memory will live in perpetuity. "So she hasn't ceased to exist. Bad luck, Francine. She never usually got things wrong. But she got this absolutely wrong."