Megan Hirst worked as a legal adviser for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste and later as an international adviser to JSMP, a Timorese judicial monitoring NGO. She has also worked in Kosovo as a Legal System Monitor for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. She has a BA in history and an LLB from the University of Queensland as well as an LLM in international law from Cambridge University.