The 35-year-old was today sentenced to a maximum of 18 years in jail, with a non-parole period of 13 years and five months, and she will be eligible for parole on May 12, 2023.
Criminal law specialist Gregory Elks said Justice Anthony Whealy had the option available of sentencing her to life in jail, but her age, background and circumstances at the time of the crime would have been considered in his sentence.
In February 2003, a law was passed to make the standard non-parole period 25 years for murders where the victim is under 18.
But Justice Whealy sentenced Lane according to the law in 1996, when the crime was committed.
"He would have still been guided by the standard non-parole period, but he wouldn't have applied it," Mr Elks said.
Mr Elks said he was not in a position to comment on whether the sentence was a light one.
"Every sentence matter you do is different," he said.
"So there are different subjectives, so where it would stand in the spectrum of things, you'd really have to know all the ins and outs of the case.
"What I could probably say is that Mr Justice Whealy is one of the most experienced Supreme Court justices that we have."
In recent cases, a mother convicted for murdering her daughter through starvation and neglect was sentenced to life, as well as a grandfather who admitted killing his two grandchildren.
The woman was found guilty of the murder of her seven-year-old daughter, known as Ebony, who died of chronic starvation, in Hawks Nest in November 2007.
Sentencing her to life in October 2009, Justice Robert Hulme described her crime as "unimaginably heartless and cruel".
The girl's father was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years' jail, with a non-parole period of 12 years.
"They were both so absorbed in their own lives that they did not care about her," the judge said.
The grandfather, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted murdering his wife and two grandchildren and attempting to murder his daughter with an axe at the family home in Cowra in June 2008.
He drowned his five-year-old granddaughter in the bath and hit his seven-year-old grandson with hammer before also drowning him in the bath.
In August 2009, he was given two life sentences for the murder of the children, as well as at least 15 years for his wife's murder and at least 12 years for the attempted murder of his daughter.
Justice Lucy McCallum said there was little about the man's circumstances to mitigate his culpability.
"The offender killed his young grandchildren when they had been entrusted to his care."
"He intended to kill them and planned their murders with grim attention."
"He killed the children knowing that he had already killed the one person who might have come to their defence that night."
The case of Rachel Pfitzner, who admitted murdering her two-year-old son, also attracted a lot of attention.
Pfitzner pleaded guilty to murdering two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth at Rosemeadow, in Sydney's south-west, in October 2007 before dumping his body in the pond at nearby Ambarvale.
The toddler died of asphyxiation in a manner that has not been identified.
She was sentenced to a maximum 25 years and six months, with a non-parole period of 19 years and two months, in December 2009.
Kathleen Folbigg, who killed four babies over 10 years by suffocating each of them, was given a maximum sentence of 40 years, with a non-parole period of 30 years, in October 2003.