What's your job about?

Hall & Wilcox is a leading Australian law firm offering services to a range of different clients across varied industries. As a law graduate at the firm, I am responsible for assisting senior lawyers with legal research, drafting advice and attending client meetings.

During a graduate year at Hall & Wilcox, you rotate through three of the firm’s different teams across a 12-month period. This is an excellent opportunity to learn the basics of the firm’s practice areas, work alongside the pre-eminent lawyers in each team and get a feel for the work you might undertake as a fully-fledged lawyer if you were to ‘settle’ in that team.

I am currently having a fantastic time rotating through the Property & Projects team.  In the week just gone, I have spent time on researching and preparing advice regarding a potential abuse of process claim, summarising recent cases in construction law and drafting a letter of demand to legal representatives of a subcontractor.

Alongside these commercially oriented tasks, Hall & Wilcox highly values pro bono work. In the past few days, I have been able to assist a senior lawyer with talking directly to a client on her VCAT case, taking instructions and providing some general information on the legal process.

What's your background?

I was born and raised in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Despite being perennially grey, Birmingham was a charming backdrop to grow up in and I met some of my closest mates studying at King Edward’s School Edgbaston. At 16, having just completed my GCSE exams, my family and I moved to Melbourne, Australia, for Mum’s work. After a whirlwind 18 months finding my feet in Melbourne and wrapping up school, I commenced my undergraduate studies in International Relations and Spanish at Monash University.

Compelled by the law’s connection to every facet of society and the teamwork that its practice necessitates, I began my Juris Doctor at Melbourne University in 2021. I was a paralegal at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne during my studies, which is where I got my first taste of commercial law as the application of law in the context of an organisation’s business needs.

I ultimately decided that I wanted to be a commercial lawyer in private practice so that I could work with a broad range of clients. Innovative, community-oriented and with leading lawyers across a number of practice areas, Hall & Wilcox seemed the obvious and ideal choice to me when it came time to consider where I would like to work. I was fortunate enough to complete the clerkship program at Hall & Wilcox in the summer of 2023, and I have been a law graduate at the firm for just under a month now.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Absolutely! Although having a law degree is a necessary pre-requisite to becoming a law graduate (and then a lawyer), I think being a good junior in any professional setting is simply about showing up with the right attitude.  If you’re a good listener, get involved and demonstrate your enthusiasm in every piece of work that comes your way, you will have every opportunity to learn and develop as a law graduate.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

The biggest thing that has stuck out to me about working at Hall & Wilcox is the responsibility and mentoring given to us by senior lawyers. Often, law graduates are able to have a first go at drafting important documents in the context of our client’s legal enquiry or claim. After submitting our work, we receive detailed, constructive feedback on what went well and any things that can be improved on. This ensures all graduates can continue to improve and live up to the ‘be remarkable’ Hallmark - one of the firm’s key values.

What are the limitations of your job?

One of the aspects of the job that can be hard is knowing when you have done enough on a task. As humans, let alone law students, many of us crave a sense of perfection. However, it is often the case, for example, that there simply is no definitive answer to a senior lawyer’s question on a discrete point of law. Your job then becomes to lay out why you think that is and what information may assist in the absence of this ‘perfect’ answer. This is a reminder to (yourself included, Karun) take a step back, recognise the inherent complexity of the law itself and know if you’ve given it your best, that is likely all that is required from you.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

• Firstly, I’d advise younger Karun to not close yourself off to certain work because of your pre-conceived ideas.
• Secondly, just because you have an interest in one area of law, it does not mean you will not like anything else even more!
• Lastly, I would advise younger Karun (as he thankfully did) to apply to places he genuinely wants to work at. Do your research, ask people who have been through it and wherever you decide sounds good should be your number one choice.