What's your job about?
I am a Lawyer in the Litigation team at Arnold Bloch Leibler. Lawyers in litigation help clients resolve legal disputes. Unlike transactional lawyers (whose role is to assist clients in creating companies or trusts, acquiring businesses or business assets) we deal with big disputes between parties, both in and out of the Courts. Our clients are usually companies, or high-net-wealth individuals. ABL litigates in a wide variety of spaces, but the matters I work on fit into three main strands:
As a first-year lawyer, my work is varied. I usually attempt the first version of letters we send to our clients and to opposing lawyers, do legal research and often draft affidavits and legal submissions to be used in Court. If you studied law at university (and if you didn’t, why are you reading this profile?) then litigious work is the closest thing to what you studied at university – you will read case law and legislation, and apply that to a factual scenario.
The areas of law I deal with most are company law, contract, wills and estates, and equity and trusts. The thing to know about litigation though is that every day (and every matter) is different, and all kinds of weird and wonderful issues will crop up which require you to engage with niche, rogue and unknown strands of the legal tapestry.
What's your background?
I grew up in Melbourne’s South-East suburbs. My mum and dad are both Barristers who spent my entire childhood encouraging me to pursue any other career besides the law. In this endeavor, they failed. I attended Huntingtower School from Prep to Year 12. At school I enjoyed drama and legal studies, so felt that law was a good fit for me. In 2017 I started at Monash University as an undergraduate, pursuing a double degree of Global Studies and Law.
At University I developed a keen interest in the laws and policies around drug use, and undertook an internship at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition (CDPC), a research and advocacy group based at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. I stayed on with CDPC after finishing my internship, and was invited to attend the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Austria on behalf of CDPC in 2020. In 2021, working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, I led a delegation to the UN on behalf of Canadian NGOs in the drug law reform space. During my time in Canada I also volunteered at a safe injecting room, and nearly left the law to become a front-line healthcare worker.
I’ve always loved the intellectual challenges that the law poses, and ultimately that fascination brought me back to wanting to pursue legal practice. I applied for seasonal clerkships in my fifth year of university and was immediately drawn to ABL’s Litigation practice. I was lucky enough to secure a clerkship at ABL, and luckier again to have been offered a graduate role. My graduate program ran from March 2023 to March 2024, and I have been working at ABL as a lawyer (admitted in the Supreme Court of Victoria and the High Court of Australia) since April 2024.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Absolutely. Litigation is one of those fields that really attracts people from all walks of life; my coworkers hail from all corners of the globe, from urban and rural upbringings and from public and private education. Some came to the law later in life after careers in fields like journalism, public service or fashion. Others (like me) started their first full-time job here. The key traits that make a good litigator are a strategic mind, an enthusiasm for the law and creativity. A competitive streak certainly doesn’t hurt either!
What's the coolest thing about your job?
As a competitive person, I love that this is one of the few jobs outside being an athlete or a professional chess player where you get to objectively win stuff. An external authority figure (usually a judge) will, at the end of a case, say “You are right. You are the winner of this dispute,” based on work that you have done, and it is terrific. I also love the diversity of what I do – each of the matters that I work on will have completely different issues at play, and it is so intellectually stimulating to turn my mind between complex problems of law, or tricky facts to prove, multiple times within a day.
What are the limitations of your job?
Litigation, no matter where you do it, revolves around external deadlines set by the Courts, and they are not easily moved. It can at times be challenging to juggle and manage these competing deadlines, especially when there are multiple deadlines all very close to each other. Sometimes the pressure is fun, as your whole team bands together to meet a tight deadline, but at other times it does require coping strategies to keep on top of the work and not allowing stress to become overwhelming.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student