In 2017 French became an overseas non-permanent judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, and was appointed chancellor of the University of Western Australia.

[4] French attended the University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1968.

[13] On 30 July 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that French would succeed Murray Gleeson as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.

[citation needed] On 18 January 2017, French was appointed a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

[19] French held a number of other positions during his time as Chief Justice, notably serving as chancellor of Edith Cowan University (1991–1997), chairman of the National Native Title Tribunal (1994–1998), and on the Supreme Court of Fiji (2003–2008).

[25] French said in a WA Law Society speech in May 2008:[1] "It is unacceptable in contemporary Australia that the legal head of the Australian state... can never be chosen by the people or their representatives, cannot be other than a member of the Anglican Church, can never be other than British and can never be an indigenous person."

Justice French is known for working for the rights of Indigenous Australians: in the early 1970s, he helped found the WA Aboriginal Legal Service.

[21] At his swearing-in ceremony as Chief Justice, French specifically referred to the long history of Indigenous Australia: Recognition of their presence is no mere platitude.

To add insult to injury, members of the Waanyi people were sitting in Court wearing T-shirts with the message "Ban French Testing".

The considerations influencing my approach were those of the administrator, the urgent need to get the process moving and to establish its credibility in the face of ongoing attacks.

Many ill-prepared applications were being lodged and upon registration were entitled to procedural rights affecting third party interests particularly in relation to mining and the release of Crown land for development around regional centres.

I learned a useful lesson from all of this and that is that the worldview and culture of the administrator which I had adopted is very different from that of the courts.In an address at the National Press Club on 5 October 2023, French spoke in favour of establishing the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, ahead of the referendum on the matter.