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Episode 82
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Professional Skills
The Road Not Taken: Navigating the Early Stages of Legal Practice
Law as stated: 10 March 2023
What is this?
This episode was published and is accurate as at this date.
Join Thoughtworks' own Aden Bates as he unites with David in the studio to lay down the laws of modern practice. Touching on the vast array of options available to young practitioners and why you shouldn't be afraid to jump into something new.
Professional Skills| What area(s) of law does this episode consider? | Career and personal development. This is a special episode in the area of Professional Skills. We suggest that it’s relevant for newly qualified practitioners in the first few years of practice, as well as law students planning on entering the profession. |
| Why is this topic relevant? | Choosing the right path through the legal profession can be difficult for many newly qualified practitioners and law students. Although it often feels like every career-oriented decision you make is the be-all and end-all, it’s not. In fact, testing the waters in a variety of types of practice can help you settle on where you want to be as you progress through your career journey. |
| What are the main points? |
In-house
Private practice – suburban and boutique
Private practice – Big Law
Private practice – NewLaw
Generally
|
| Show notes | Aden’s LinkedIn profile |
| David Turner:
1:00 | Hello and welcome to Hearsay the Legal Podcast, a CPD podcast that allows Australian lawyers to earn their CPD points on the go and at a time that suits them. I’m your host David Turner. Hearsay the Legal Podcast is proudly supported by Lext Australia. Lext’s mission is to improve user experiences in the law and legal services and Hearsay the Legal Podcast is how we’re improving the experience of CPD. Now if you’re a regular listener to Hearsay, you might know that we usually start and end each episode of Hearsay with some common questions. The first one that we start the episode off with is asking our guests how they came to be in the role that they’re in today. And the last question we ask our guests is usually for some tips for students and aspiring young lawyers about how they might come to work in that role in the future. Today as a special episode for our student and young lawyer listeners, we are focusing just on those questions for the whole hour. Joining me today is Aden Bates. Welcome Aden. |
| Aden Bates: | G’day, nice to be here. |
| DT: | Now, Aden, you are on the show today because you’ve really worked almost every, sort of, mode of private legal practice conceivable really. You’ve worked in boutique law firms, you’ve worked in large law firms, you’ve worked in a NewLaw practice, and now you’re working in house. |
| AB: | Yeah, quite the breadth. The only thing I haven’t done is a mid-tier firm. So if you are wanting to work at a mid-tier firm or you are working at a mid-tier firm, it’s the only one I haven’t got. |
| DT: | And I suppose that gives you a good deal of perspective that some of our student listeners might appreciate in terms of where they might fit into the legal profession in that I think it’s fair to say that those different ways of practicing – those different organisations – suit different people. They might suit the way you like to work. They might suit a personality type or they might suit other traits that you have, right? |
| AB: 2:00 | Yeah, they’re all very different beasts and you’re about to get the nitty gritty details of each one. They are super varied and not for everyone, so keen to help out in any way I can. |
| DT: | Yeah, absolutely. Now before we go back to the start of your career and where you started out, tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now. You’re in-house; where are you working? |
| AB: | So I work at a software consulting firm called Thoughtworks. Which, every time I tell people that I work here they’re like; “what is that?” The best way to describe it is, it’s a competitor to Accenture, which I think most people know because it’s much bigger, but a fundamentally… |
| DT: | Largest consulting firm in the world, I think. |
| AB
3:00: | It is. Yeah. It’s huge. They’re one of our main competitors. There are of course others. But we do software consulting, so developing niche products for really big clients like PEXA – our devs helped build that. Realestate.com, Foxtel; like big names that people would know. And like digital birth certificate, they’re doing that at the moment – which if you follow Victor Dominello on LinkedIn, he likes to pump the product. It’s really exciting. There’s so many touchpoints in society that this business helped create. I’m a legal counsel there. It’s a really small team, but it’s a global business, so super interesting. Definitely the biggest company that I’ve worked for. Just doing like general in-house counsel stuff. |
| DT: | Tell us a little bit about working in-house. How long have you been working in-house at Thoughtworks now? |
| AB:
4:00 | Only three months. So I’ve just joined. It’s hard to say that I know everything about in-house work. So take everything I say with a grain of salt. I am a newbie to this. But it’s been really good so far. I’ve been working with all sorts of different parts of the business. Like it’s crazy how fast the touchpoints come to you in an in-house role, particularly at the start. It’s like you need to meet so many different stakeholders all at once and then understand so many different kinds of the business all at once. So in a private practice law firm, by comparison perhaps, you’ll do a siloed piece of work until you get it right, and then you might add something else, and then you continually add until you’ve got like this nice shaped level of expertise in something. Whereas in-house, it’s just like you’re dropped in the deep end – understand everything about the business as soon as possible. And then any legal question, no matter what it is, gets directed to you. So you have to go far and wide quickly – rather than slow and steady within a narrow area, I guess in private practice. And that’s been my first sort of learning, I think, since joining. |
| DT: | Something that a lot of in-house counsel talk about is the balance between working directly with the business and, as you say, really understanding the business and the context in which you’re giving that advice over a broad range of topics. And also working with external counsel, being that kind of project manager for a large piece of legal work where you might be getting external experts to help but you’re managing costs and you are translating that expert knowledge for the business. Tell us a little bit about the balance between giving that advice or doing that in-house work directly for the business and managing external counsel. |
| AB:
5:00
6:00
7:00 | Yeah, it’s interesting. I think this is probably – and we’ll touch on this, I’m sure – through the discussion of other roles that I’ve held. But private practice lawyers typically aren’t focused on the outcome, rather the process of how they reach the outcome. Whereas business stakeholders, at least at Thoughtworks, are much more interested in the outcome. It’s “okay, what’s the decision? And just, I don’t really care how we get there. If you are comfortable, I trust you. Therefore, what is the outcome?” Which is weird because in my private practice it’s always been about the process. Here’s my answer and here’s why I think this is the answer because senior associates or partners or whoever you’re reporting to want to understand how you’ve reached the answer. Because they don’t trust you, and they probably shouldn’t because you’re new to it, you’re learning. It’s sort of, I don’t know, apprenticeship style structure of learning. Whereas in in-house it’s; “okay, I’ve got the answer from a top six firm and I’ve got 12 pages of reasoning from somebody who we’ve paid an obscene amount of money. Now I have to translate this into a three line sentence answer that is trustworthy and that I can justify based on the advice and what I’ve done as well.” So it’s really hard. It’s like a synthesis exercise, but it’s also building trust with a stakeholder. When you get the advice from a big firm or even a small firm, really, it’s often volume intensive. There’s just so much stuff and not a lot of it matters to the stakeholder. Yeah, it’s hard but an interesting thing to do. I like it. It’s more commercial, I think. TIP: Now, earlier this season Hearsay interviewed Danielle Keyes, Group General Counsel at Nova Entertainment and Danielle expressed similar sentiments to Aden’s. General Counsel, or lawyers working in-house more generally, can be pulled in a lot of different directions at once. Both Aden and Danielle’s view is that the roles suit someone who’s commercially minded, and able – to use the trite tech truism – “to move fast and break things”, while being a trusted source of legal knowledge at the same time. In Danielle’s case, she speaks about the need to be strategic – not only in a business sense, but also in the way that you approach giving advice to all the different types of in-house stakeholders. Right down to the language that you use to pitch that advice. The language that you use for the sales team might be very different to the engineering team and very different again for the board of directors or the C-Suite. Now, that’s not to say that the role of legal advisor is subsidiary to the role of the commercial advisor. It isn’t and shouldn’t be. it’s only that there’s so much more of that commercial perspective required in these types of roles over something like private practice. So if this sounds like you, or you want to hear more on this perspective, catch Danielle’s -that’s episode 69 – it’s called, Pushing Reset: Navigating Strategic Complexities as Risk Averse In-House Lawyers. Aden’s now going to elaborate a bit more on what being in-house is like. |
| DT:
8:00 | How do you skill up on the sorts of non-legal skills, and they might be, what’s called sometimes soft skills – and I hate that term because I think it really undervalues how important the non-legal, non-technical skills are – but how do you skill up on those non-technical and technical, non-legal skills that enable you to understand the business? I’m talking about things like financial literacy, understanding at a high level, the strategy of the business, understanding the culture of the business. How do you develop those skills so that you can put that advice in context? Like you say, because those aren’t necessarily things that you’re taught at law school. |
| AB:
9:00
10:00 | Absolutely not. There should be a subject on this, like managing client expectations and a range of different clients and how it changes every time. I had the opportunity to learn great client management skills here at Assured. But those skills don’t serve me in the current role that I’m in because I’m not serving the same kind of client. They’re of course translatable skills and I think those ones, if you’re going to focus on them, are personality interactions. So understanding different personality types. Getting in front of as many people as you can, like the deep end-ing that I spoke about earlier is not just about legal technical skills, but also about deep end-ing yourself in front of as many people and different kinds of people in the business as possible. So it’s like having good chats, understanding people, going to as many meetings as you can. As much as it’s, Zoom fatigue or meeting fatigue. Like at the start it’s absolutely critical to build that skill early so that all the work you do after that can be tailored towards the recipient of that information – who you know well because you’ve sat in front of them for so long. Which is super intimidating. Like it’s actually terrifying to try to remember all these people’s names and like what their preference is for where they want to go for coffee or like their wife’s name and what they like to do on the weekend because you have all these sort of similar chats and then that stuff is so important because building that rapport and trust allows you to have open conversations about legal stuff later which, naturally, people are a little – and I’m sure you’d appreciate this – people are a little hesitant to talk about legal risks, especially people in the business. They don’t want to talk to the lawyers. If you’re seen talking to the lawyer, you’ve got a HR complaint or you are like, looking to leave or you’re in trouble or whatever. It’s hard to get in front of people and build that trust. So I reckon that’s the skill to focus on. And then financial literacy is a good one. What you really want to focus on, I think is like just doing an accounting 101 type situation. Get like a really basic accounting textbook if you’re expected to understand what the gross margin on a project is, for example, not that it’s a legal thing to check, like you probably got a finance team that will check that, but it’s always good to know. That sort of stuff’s important. And also if you’re interested in the business, which you should be if you’re working in-house, I think. If you don’t have a passion for what the company does, hedonic adaptation means that you’re eventually going to learn to hate this job. So like you kind of want to… I think, if you want to be involved, so much of business is about money, right? So if you’re just sitting there in these meetings being like; “I love what this business does, but I have no idea if we’re making any money or not”, you’re going to feel disconnected or disassociated from the job. |
| DT: | I think it’s important to be able to participate in conversations about the successes and goals of the firm. |
| AB: | Exactly. |
| DT: | When I say firm… the business, the firm in an economic sense, not necessarily a law firm. But it’s important to be able to have those conversations. Even if you’re not making those decisions I think it’s important that it helps you contextualise what you are doing. It sounds like you’re really enjoying Thoughtworks, really thriving there. What kind of person do you think thrives in an in-house environment? |
| AB: 11:00 | I think someone that is comfortable going into an area where they basically have little to no knowledge about the topic. So if someone comes to you with; “oh, here’s a data protection issue. We’ve got a developer in Germany that, like, has this personal information on his laptop. Like what’s the process here?” And for me that’s happened. I’ve been like; “I know the GDPR, like, I know how it works, but I’ve never had to apply it in practice”. And so I just had to jump in, read a bunch of stuff about it, get familiarised with it, look at past advice that we’ve given and then just try to make a call quickly. Because I think, yeah, you’ve got to be comfortable with risk, comfortable with speed. You can’t take your time and muddle along. If it’s a tortoise and the hare you’re probably better off being a hare I think as an in-house person. Because it’s like you’re constantly being pulled away to so many different things and you’ve got to make fast decisions. And often they’ll be wrong and you’ve got to be comfortable with that. |
| DT: | I think the Aesop animal fable example I think of there is not so much the tortoise and the hare, but the fox and the hedgehog. |
| AB: | Yeah, true. |
| DT:
12:00 | The hedgehog’s good at one thing, protecting itself with its spines and the fox is a generalist, is crafty and can do a lot of different things. And when that fable was first told, it was about the benefits of specialisation, that kind of Adam Smith; “we should all be specialised in one thing so that we can all contribute our part”. But in an increasingly complex world I think there’s a renewed role for the generalist fox. |
| AB: | Definitely. The only thing that I struggle with that metaphor is; I feel like the fox is better at private practice because they’re like hunters and, I don’t know, they’re more of a predator. Whereas, I don’t know, is a hedgehog like a prey animal? I feel like in-house counsel is definitely the prey animal. There is a killer instinct in private practice firms that just doesn’t exist in other businesses. |
| DT: | So I was going to ask about this because it sounds like there’s a lot of upsides to being in-house, but are there any downsides? There’s one I can think of, which is that you’ve described Thoughtworks as the largest company you’ve ever worked for, you’re in a team of two. You’ve got one other lawyer you can look to for guidance and support and mentorship. But is it lonely? Is it tricky to get that guidance and support when you need it? |
| AB:
13:00
14:00 | There’s two questions there. Is it lonely? Yes. Is it tricky to find guidance when you need it? No. I think having a really good direct resource is something that I’ve got and I think that’s super important. If you are in a team of two and the person that you’re with is not responding to you or, like, hard to reach, that is just mortifying. You’ll not only be lonely, but you’ll be without resource. I think I’ve got the resource, but it does feel very different because I’m used to being in a business where I’ve got 15 lawyers in a team or something and it’s just easy to bounce ideas off people who are just around you or not feel like you’re alone. But I’m the decision maker a lot of the time, and it’s often that I don’t have support or it’s being fully delegated to me to just handle stuff. Which is fine and I’m comfortable with that, but I think looking back 3 years, I might not have been. Yeah, you’re right. You do feel lonely and it can feel like there’s not adequate resourcing, but luckily here I’ve got a really good mentor to work under and I’m really happy with the resourcing and responsiveness and stuff. Also one thing to mention about Thoughtworks is it’s NASDAQ listed, it was founded in America, but there are offices all over the world and they’re all contained. So like the APAC Thoughtworks is very different to India Thoughtworks or China Thoughtworks or America Thoughtworks, all through Europe, it’s very different. They all have their own regional heads, so it feels very like an Aussie business and a lot of our clients are Aussie companies too. So like Atlassian, Realestate.com, all that sort of stuff. Like they’re all here in Sydney. So it does feel like we’re only like an organisation of a few hundred people but yeah, technically it’s massive. |
| DT: | Now going from where you are today to where you started in some much smaller boutique firms, right? |
| AB: | Yep. I started in a leaky office in the suburbs with one of my tasks – to give you an idea of this firm – was to rip up the carpet after the office had leaked. I had to stay back after 5.00 PM and I ripped up all the square carpet – I think you’ve got it here! But anyway, like I ripped it up. It was just mold, sludge that’s been there for years and they’re like; “can you clean it up? We have a really important client coming in tomorrow and we can’t have the office stink.” And I was just like; “this is totally normal.“ |
| DT: | Yeah. I think I remember that unit in third year, the flooring unit in law school. |
| AB: | Yeah. The most efficient way to get sludge off the floor with a sponge was recited by Justice Bathurst . |
| DT: | Yeah, yeah. That’s – the Chief Justice is really an expert in… |
| AB: | Oh gosh. |
| DT: | … floor repair and carpet cleaning. Yeah, wow. |
| AB: 15:00 | It’s like this tiny little office and they were bootstrapping young guys that were just trying to make this firm work. They bought it off their boss before but it was just, like, very small. It was doing conveyancing, wills and probate, some suing the council type stuff, little litigation matters but the whole business fit in a tiny little cubicle. It was very, very small. It was good though. I did it while I was at uni, so I worked as a paralegal for four days a week and I crammed all my subjects onto a Friday, which I’m convinced is the source of all my suffering during those years. That was such a poor choice. |
| DT: | Yeah. For our student listeners, would you recommend doing that? |
| AB: | No, absolutely not. |
| DT:
16:00 | You can go wrong the other way. When I was in first year I remember thinking I was so clever because I had given myself a four day week at uni, but I had only got like a 2 hour block on each day and I thought; “this is great. My day starts at 9.00 AM and ends at 11.00 AM“. And after a couple of weeks I realised; “well, that’s really inefficient. I have to come to uni every single day for only 2 hours, and then I’ve got to fit the rest of my life around that after midday”. So I learned from that. But yes, fitting a full-time study schedule into one day is probably going too far the other way. |
| AB: | Yeah, it’s a delicate balance. And I think it also means that you would feel the need to get out of uni really fast because like I’ve got to make the most of the rest of my half day and I thought like I had to get out of uni really fast because I was like, “this is absolutely miserable.” As soon as 5.00 PM or 6.00 PM hit on that Friday, I just wanted to be so far from uni for as long as possible, right? Like I just didn’t want to think about it – which is not the way to learn. You need to go away and still feel engaged when you’re at home or at work doing something. You need to be thinking about it so that you learn and think at a subconscious level. Whereas if uni pains you and you just want to get out as soon as possible, it’s not helpful. So, wouldn’t recommend. But I do recommend having a legal job while you study if you can. Obviously in small firms like the one I worked at, they want you to be there for as much as possible so you can field calls and be the point of contact. It’s a bit hard if you’re only there one or two days a week, but that flexibility I think is much better now than it was. Would recommend that. Just get the balance right. |
| DT: 17:00 | Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other smaller or boutique firms that you worked in was this one you worked with the Assured Legal Solutions… |
| AB: | I did, yeah. |
| DT: | … early in your career. That was an awful experience, wasn’t it? |
| AB: | Oh yeah. If you think the floorboards were bad; yeah, this is just the beginning. No, it was good. Yeah, I think I learned much more than I did at the other firm technically and professionally. I don’t think it would be boutique, the firm I described, I would describe my first firm that I worked as a suburban. |
| DT: | Yeah. |
| AB:
18:00
19:00 | Like it was a suburban law firm. TIP: Now, the distinction that Aden’s drawing here is more than just an academic one. Aden’s going to expand more on this idea in a moment, but for some background, in the 2021 Annual Profile of Solicitors in NSW published by the Law Society of NSW, as at October of that year, nearly half of all solicitors in NSW worked in the Sydney CBD. Now, for comparison, one third of the total number of solicitors in NSW were working in the Sydney suburban region, and about 12% were working in regional or rural regions with a couple of percent left over for interstate practitioners and overseas practitioners who are registered in NSW for some reason. Now, it’s not quite fair to categorise the type of work legal practices undertake solely by their geographic location. And there’s a reason for that. A regional practice might be required to cover a broad range of matters as needed by the population of that area. That could be family or wills and estates – which is a traditional bastion of suburban or rural work – but there’s every possibility that they could be briefed in areas as diverse as commercial law, taxation or banking and finance. Businesses have those needs whether they’re in the city or the country. But where things get interesting is if you break down the proportion of solicitors just working in private practice by location – then the trend is completely flipped. Of those working in private practice 50% work in the Sydney suburbs and only 25% work in the Sydney CBD. So what’s that telling us? Well, the difference is all of those in-house lawyers and government lawyers who work in the Sydney CBD, drawing up the total proportion of all solicitors who are working in the Sydney CBD well beyond the number of solicitors in private practice working there. Ok. So with that all in mind, we’ll touch next on how we’ll define boutique and suburban law firms and which type of firm a young practitioner might be suited to. We were helping families. I think we had a few companies that we worked with, but for the large part, like it was very small, based in the suburbs. I think the police station was across the road because one of the lawyers at the firm was in the Local Court so much that’s why they chose that. But it also meant that we had loitering individuals outside the office, which just felt really weird. |
| DT: | I guess we should define some of these terms for our listeners. |
| AB: | Oh, true. |
| DT:
20:00 | So that we know what we’re talking about because that’s a good point. Boutique just doesn’t mean small. I think when we describe a boutique law firm, we’re often describing a smaller firm that has a specialist area of practice, that doesn’t do everything, but might. Let’s take Assured Legal as an example – specifically does insolvency financial services and corporations work. When we’re talking about a suburban generalist practice, it might be a similar size to the boutique firm. Might be two, three, even four principals, but has a much broader range of practice areas. |
| AB: | Yep. 100%. I think that’s an apt description and obviously suburban firms typically tend to be in the suburbs hence their name. |
| DT: | Yes, important feature. |
| AB: | Boutiques typically are in the city, probably because of the clientele, right? Like that they service, which are corporations usually based in Sydney or some capital city or whatever. I think that’s a distinction in my mind. The clientele, the location, and then like the work culture. I definitely worked harder hours at Assured than I did at the prior firm, but they were good hours. I felt like I was growing, whereas the other firm it was just doing heaps and heaps of conveying. So many that I forgot the client’s names and I forgot the property addresses because there were just so many. And it just felt like I was this little cog. But it was good because now I could do conveying and I did a bit at Assured and I did some after that as well. It was a skill that I’ve taken with me through. And then it’s funny when you meet lawyers that don’t even know what a transfer of land looks like. |
| DT: | Yeah. |
| AB: | But they’ve bought two units in their entire life. You’re like, “how did you…” “Oh, I didn’t read the contract. I didn’t understand it.” I was like, this is mental. |
| DT: | Plumbers with leaky taps… |
| AB: 21:00 | To distinguish them; Assured very much insolvency work, which I was studying at the time and I was interested in and corporations law, which I felt like was the way to go. If I had to distinguish the kind of person that might choose between those two, I would say if you really like working with people, helping people that don’t really know anything about what’s going on – if you have that social worker buried within you – the suburban law firm is probably going to be a better place for you. Because you’re going to have a more intimate place in your client’s lives, and you’re going to help them through difficult times or stressful moments that aren’t objectively stressful. To each person that I was helping in a conveyance, that transaction was the most expensive thing they’ve ever bought in their entire lives and it was so stressful and they hated the real estate agent and then they hated the vendors they wanted to chop their heads off because they were like, “oh, they’re so annoying, blah, blah, blah.” But listen; “your conveyancing transaction is one of hundreds that I do every year. This is not a big deal”. You can’t say that, |
| DT: | No. |
| AB: | You have to empathise so much with every person. And if that’s exhausting to you, maybe go with a more commercial corporate client base. |
| DT: 22:00 | Yeah. I think that’s true in lots of different practice areas and maybe even more true in somewhere you’re doing that small litigation work, for example. A Local Court claim for a mum and dad client might be the most stressful thing they’ve ever done, that day in court might be the worst day of their life. But for you it’s one of 20 matters that you’re doing at the time, and you probably won’t remember it in 5 years time. I think you’re right. You do need to have that level of empathy and I hate to use the label, but it’s an understood label, those soft skills, I suppose. |
| AB: | You’re a fan of these soft skills. |
| DT: | I’m a fan of the skills, but not of calling them soft. I think it really denigrates them. |
| AB: | Yeah. |
| DT: | But it is a nice umbrella term. |
| AB: | Yeah. No, I think you’re right. |
| DT:
23:00 | It’s a useful term. Whereas – and I can speak from my own experience here as a lawyer who’s really enjoyed working in boutique practice in a specialist area. If you’re really interested in the way a business works, and being part of the success of a business – and I find working in a boutique firm often you’re working for younger businesses, smaller businesses that have a more ambitious growth plan than a really mature, publicly listed company – then it’s exciting to be part of that and it’s exciting to understand that and help to guide it and be a trusted advisor to those ambitious, exciting people. Now what do you think are the drawbacks of working in a smaller firm? |
| AB: | I’m about to step on a landmine here. I’m in the building…. |
| DT: | Yeah, that’s right. |
| AB:
24:00 | Not the same building, but I think for me, I got pushed a bit hard. I think in a boutique firm, it’s not like a big firm where they’re going to put you in a little silo and you’ll just do the same thing over and over again. At a boutique firm like Assured – did heaps of different kind of work. So I think everyone kept telling me that I’d make a great litigator – but deep down, I knew that wasn’t the case. And I think, in the interest of growing, it can be the case that you’re pushed in directions you don’t want to go. And that’s good sometimes because it shows you; “actually, the thing that I was terrified of isn’t that scary”. And then you can make a choice on whether you actually want to do it, right? So you’ve got to take the plunge before you decide whether the water’s too cold or not. You can look at it and go; “oh, it looks freezing.” And then someone else might tell you; “ah, it’s warm. You’ll do fine.” Until you jump in, you don’t know. Of course there’s a ladder to get out if you do decide once you’re in; “okay, this is actually freezing.” Or maybe you’re like; “actually this is fine.” So I think it’s good to be pushed. But for me, I think there are, like, a few times where I was just like; “oh, I’m so out of my depth and this is not good for my mental health.” But then there were obviously times where I was like, “I’m out of my depth, but I’m still in control. I still feel good. This is a choice I’m making.” So I think that did not happen to me at all in a big firm – the idea of being pushed too far. In fact, the firm I think is structured in such a way not to put you out and make you look like a fool because the brand is so much more important. Whereas at a boutique, the people are much more important. |
| DT: | Yeah. |
| AB: | It’s like; “I want to make sure you’re developing and you’re finding your path.” Whereas at a big firm, it’s; “we need to make sure the brand’s integrity is being maintained and whether you are stunted as a result or not, we don’t really care because quite honestly, we need to make sure our clients see us as premium, not like some guy fumbling around trying to figure it out.“ |
| DT: 25:00 | I think that a lot of businesses will say that their people are their greatest asset but that’s not always reflected in practice. And I agree, I think in a boutique firm as a small firm that touts itself as having specialised expertise and very high quality lawyers, it’s important to push young lawyers to develop those skills in a broad range of areas. And that very richly realised metaphor about the cold water – you had a ladder. I thought that metaphor was very well constructed. |
| AB: | Oh, there’s sharks in the water as well. Yeah, we can go deeper! |
| DT:
26:00 | Yep. I think it’s not just about facing what you’re apprehensive about as well and overcoming that. But it might also be having the opportunity to try something that you then discover that you’re maybe not so interested in, even though you thought you were. I interview lots of guests on this show and virtually all of them say; well,at uni I was really interested in X and then straight out of uni I got a job in Y. And I discovered I didn’t really have any interest in X anymore, I was interested in Y. Or I was really interested in X, so I got a job in X… and I hated it. And so I moved into Y”. I think often we have these expectations about what we think we’ll like, and it takes some practical experience to challenge that. I can speak from experience there. I thought I was going to be an intellectual property lawyer. I thought that was so cool. And working for a little while on a trademark portfolio was all it took for me to realise how much I didn’t want to do that. But insolvency law came out of nowhere and I found it a really fascinating example of how the law is economics in action. The allocation of scarce resources based on what we as a society think is most valuable there – what we want to uphold. To go back to the point you’re originally making through that very richly realised metaphor of the cold water. You do – in a boutique practice and also in a suburban generalist practice – get a broader range of experience. And that might be challenging at times, but it’s also tremendous for personal growth. |
| AB: 27:00
28:00 | Yeah, well it’s built on that. So like you’re at a suburban firm, you’re at a boutique firm, around you are all of these different shaped pools, and you’ve got so many choices, almost too many choices. And you’ve got your mentors and seniors around you telling you to jump in as many pools as possible. However, you’re not a confident swimmer. You’ve just come out of a swimming school and you are like; “okay, they look really deep and big, so I’ve got to choose carefully, right?”. But then you’ve got the seniors telling you; “no, it’s fine. You just jump in, get out, try another one“. You’re like; “but I don’t want to waste time in my career“. It’s like paralysing almost in that sense. Whereas if you go onto a big firm, you’re ring fenced into the kiddie pool. Like there are no choices. It’s okay; “here’s your rotations, you’ve got choice between two practice groups. What do you want to do?” And at the end you end up in one of them and then that’s it. You might talk to people in other pools, might scream over and be like; “hey, how’s that going?”. And then they’ll tell you it’s miserable and you’ll be miserable or both of you are happy or whatever, but you stay in that lane. And it removes the decision paralysis because you don’t have to decide, you’re just forced into this position so you can just focus on getting really good at it and deciding whether you hate X or you hate Y or like X or like Y. Like I really enjoyed studying insolvency, but in practice I found that it was far too technical and complex for me. I felt like I wanted something a bit more value generative as well. Like in the same way you find it fascinating. Scarce resource. I find that depressing because I find it’s like there’s always going to be losers. There just can’t be winners… |
| DT: | … everyone loses. It’s just a question of how much! |
| AB:
29:00
30:00 | Yeah, see this is what I mean. It’s just so pessimistic. Like it’s like there has to be suffering involved and I’m just, like, I don’t know. We can talk a little bit about when I worked at like a startup NewLaw firm, which worked exclusively with like startups and high growth companies and stuff. In that case, VCs lose money, but they’re so rich that it doesn’t matter, so. TIP: NewLaw. It’s a bit of an ambiguous term used in the legal industry at the moment and we’re going to talk a little bit more about NewLaw throughout this episode, but it’s kind of an umbrella term that’s used as a shorthand for a whole range of different ways of practising law. A law firm might describe itself as a NewLaw firm because of a technology or a process or a business model – a way of working that sets it apart from that traditional model of legal practice. Now, whether that model suits a particular practitioner is a hard question. But as Aden’s about to touch on, it can be an area of legal practice or a mode of legal practice that really appeals to young lawyers who want to be on the forefront of developments in the profession. If you’re interested in NewLaw and you want to dip your toes in the pool – to use Aden’s analogy – check out Episode 65 with Demetrio Zema, the Founder and Director of Law Squared. Law Squared is a NewLaw firm that uses a lawyer-focused lens on the experience of practice, alongside a subscription pricing model for clients. In that episode, Demetrio talks about his view on the issue of billable hours. If you have a listen to that episode, make sure you contrast that perspective with Aden’s view on working past the fixed fee budget which he’ll touch on later in this episode. Yeah, I think in the case of like unsecured creditors, like tradies that just did the work and they don’t get paid, I’m a bit like; “oh, sorry mate. Yeah, I understand, but this is the way the law works“. Yeah, I don’t know. I think, changed my mind. It was good in the sense that I had the choice to do some insolvency, like I was doing other stuff as well. I don’t know, I was doing so much, but it was good to just dabble in it and be like; “okay, I enjoy it enough I really like this job and the people I work with, so I’m going to do it but I just don’t see myself going all the way”. Ironically went and worked in restructuring and insolvency at a bigger firm afterwards, but I think it took a little bit longer for me to finally realise that it wasn’t for me. But yeah, having all the choices at a boutique firm – it’s a perfect balance of you’re not doing everything under the sun. You’re doing a range of things, but there’s still rough lane dividers for you to stay within. So there’s a little bit of decision paralysis, but not too much. But I would 100% recommend going with a boutique over a suburban firm if you are more inclined to go towards challenging yourself. But if you want to potentially dip your toes in more complex areas of law, and then obviously diligence the firm and its head honchos really deeply to understand what they do and see if you align with it. |
| DT: 31:00 | And just before we move on to your experience at a large firm. I suppose that experience in a broad range of areas, that’s prepared you very well for a role in-house, whereas you say it’s probably the broadest range of topics… |
| AB: | True. |
| DT: | … that you’ve had to cover in your career. So I think that, again, experience as a generalist. I know a lot of people go from very large law firms – again, because the brand is very strong. It’s a great thing to have on your CV – but they go from a very niche expertise in a large law firm straight in-house. And that expertise might be relevant to this slice of the legal work for that company, but is not relevant to everything else. And it can be a real steep learning curve getting over the rest of that content. I imagine having that experience at a suburban firm, at a boutique law firm, seeing a few different areas of commercial law made that transition a little bit easier for you. |
| AB:
32:00 | 100%, yeah. I think my experience at Sprintlaw – which is the startup firm that I worked at – really helped in that regard because it was even wider than the stuff I was doing at Assured. And it was more shallow. So the stuff at like Assured was deep – within guardrails but still pretty broad. Whereas at Sprintlaw it was like super surface level, across heaps of different kinds of things and more commercial, I think. At Assured the legal knowledge is much more specific and much deeper in certain areas, particularly insolvency. So there was those moments of following the case law all the way through to the originating judgment and then comparing it with different jurisdictions and then having that sort of complex legal analysis. That kind of analysis I think I did once at Sprintlaw and even then the client complained that it was too complex. So I was like; “oh, sorry about that, force of habit!”. So yeah, I think that probably was more useful I guess in preparing me for in-house. But yes, boutiques are better than suburban and better than Big Law for preparing you to go in-house I think. |
| DT: | Let’s talk about your work at a Big Law firm. That must have been a huge adjustment. |
| AB: | Yeah. |
| DT: | You worked in a financial and restructuring team. Tell us a little bit about the role. |
| AB: 33:00
34:00 | So again, pretty small team so you know, five people, pretty top heavy. So there was; partner, two senior associates, and one associate. And then me. I was the junior lawyer in the team – I think I joined when I was about two PQE – so I was still pretty new to the profession. And I had this chip on my shoulder, like I went to a regional university down the south coast – UOW – and I’d clawed my way up, if you like, in the clout sphere. Like I’d started at this leaky floor replacement suburban law firm helping people who had committed minor traffic offences and conveyancing, to a firm that was working with some of the private lenders, big banks, sometimes doing stuff that was in the news and working with people that were respected experts in their field and known in the industry, to then having the opportunity to go to the big shots, the big leagues, like that was the thing that I’d always been obsessed with. It was so rare for people from regional universities to get a chance to go to such a prestigious firm. And this is one of the top six firms. And I don’t know, I just had this thing that I felt like I had to do it. And every single person that I trusted in my life told me not to do it. Like every confidante, every person who I should have listened to was telling me; “this is not a good idea”. But most of the people that you know really cared about me were like “you’ve got to try because you’ve got to make that choice yourself“. It’s the same thing about the pool analogy. They could see me learing over the edge into this scary pool of Big Law. And they’re going; “you’re not going to like it”. And I’m like; “but how do I know until I’ve jumped in?” Because I’ve been trained to just jump in pools and just figure it out and see if I like it. I went then COVID hit literally two months into the job. And it was in restructuring and insolvency. And if those of you that know anything about the industry, they changed the insolvency law regime around that time to prevent people from winding up companies making statutory demands, requiring six months… |
| DT: | … basically suspended insolvency laws for all intents and purposes for that period. |
| AB: | They were just like; “that’s it. No more insolvencies for now, we’ll just pretend that every business is solvent. Okay, everyone go away now…“ |
| DT: | … and take away the consequences if they’re not. |
| AB:
35:00
36:00 | Yeah, it was just bizarre. And I think at first there was this flurry of advice around; “what does this actually mean?“. Advising a lot of secured lenders on what their obligations and rights are and all that sort of stuff. But then after that just absolute like decimation of new work. And as a last in, first out type of culture – which I think exists in most of those firms – it was a bit like immediately I could feel my head being placed slowly on the chopping block when the volume was just not what it had to be. Anyone that’s worked in a big firm knows that the billables are everything, and it’s like monitored and the expectation of billables in those firms is really high. Not without justification – like that’s what they’re for. But it was just obvious I wasn’t billing enough. There wasn’t enough work around. I was trying to do some cross practice stuff, but then the economy was a little shoddy as well, because everyone was scared about COVID. So M&A went down. Anyway, it was just hard. Useful though, we had some really interesting matters. Some really good ones. Some publicly listed companies doing restructuring and some enforcement stuff and it was a good blend of litigation and deal work; like doing some deeds of company arrangement, but also ending up in court doing some litigation work. So it was a good blend. And the people I worked with were extremely intelligent. Very smart, very good at what they did. And in many respects I wasn’t shaping up I think in the way that they did. Like I just was not as keenly interested in the technical details as they were of their particular practice of restructuring and insolvency. As I said earlier, I think deep down I knew that it wasn’t for me, but I took the shot because it was my only chance. Like I had a connect. And we can talk about how to get into big firms, but I had a connect – someone that was working at Assured – knew the team that I was applying into. And I had that sort of word of mouth recommendation and it was in the sort of vein of experience that I had and I was thinking; “I’m not going to get another chance to do this”. This is it. I’m just going to have to get behind this practice group. And when I arrived I was like “these people really love insolvency. Like they love it more than I love anything“. Like, it’s just kind of scary, but also made me realise this is probably not where I am supposed to be. |
| DT: 37:00 | If you were to describe a person who that role would really suit, who would be really well suited to a career working in a large law firm – it’s someone who really wants to be an expert in a particular field. |
| AB
38:00: | My suggestion to people listening; if you’re not sure whether you should go to a big firm or not, you’re probably not going to like it. The people who belong there already want to be there because it’s what they’ve always wanted, and even those people will probably still burn out. Like the requirement of dedication and obsession with, yeah, like you’ve said, building an expertise that just trumps all others and working insanely long hours. That kind of, I don’t know, personality, I feel like you just know if you’ve got it or not. It’s very hard to develop it and sustain it in a healthy way if you don’t have it. So I think, with that said, I’m describing the exact same scenario that I was in where you’ve got someone preaching to you; “don’t do this, don’t do this. It’s terrible!”. But in realistic terms, you are not going to know unless you try it. So that’s my recommendation. And I think the kind of person that would do well in that firm. But that’s not to say if you don’t feel like you identify with that personality, you shouldn’t try. Because I might be wrong! I don’t know. I don’t know you, I don’t know whoever’s listening, so maybe worth giving a shot. But just keep in mind, you’re going to be getting yourself into some serious sort of intellectual dedication and hard work. I’m talking about 10 times harder than uni, 10 times harder. Like it’s harder in all the ways. |
| DT:
39:00
40:00 | Yeah. TIP: Now, whether you went to law school recently or a bit less recently, I’m sure there was a flurry of activity in fourth year come clerkship season about getting into one of these big so-called “top-tier firms”, maybe described as the “Big 6” or the “Big 8” – the number seems to grow every year. And it’s a pretty traditional path funnel into legal practice for a lot of law students and young lawyers, myself included. I followed that path when I was just coming out of university. And the work that you can do at a Big Law firm can be really different depending on which firm, practice, or partner that you work for. If we take the example of a litigator at a suburban or boutique law firm and compare that to a junior litigator at a Big Law firm – the experience couldn’t be more different. Anecdotally, it wouldn’t be uncommon for a young practitioner starting out in a small suburban law firm to be on their feet in a courtroom or tribunal soon after getting their practising certificate. In some cases, even requesting leave to appear before they’ve got their practicing certificate but they might be doing that in the Local or District Court. Now at a large firm, that same young practitioner might not get up on their feet in a courtroom for many many years – they might never get up on their feet in a courtroom but the litigation that they’re working on could be in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, even the High Court. Now, something to keep in mind about Big Law is that the learning and training opportunities at large law firms for young lawyers are some of the highest quality and deepest training available to young lawyers. I’m going to touch more on this from my own experience in just a moment in the episode. I can also speak from experience. I started my career in a large law firm and spent a good long time there. I think it is tremendous training. It is very difficult. And it does take dedication and there’s a lot of hard work. But it is fantastic training. It doesn’t suit someone who wants to be a generalist who wants to do a lot of different things. But if you want to be an expert in your field I think there’s few other places that will provide you with the level of training that a large law firm team that works in that field can give you. |
| AB: | 100%. It is A grade education material. So if you are super passionate about IP, love trademarks, go and work in a big firm IP team for a bit. Like it doesn’t have to be forever as well. That’s the other thing, and I want to talk about this if we have time, but like the job is not identity. It doesn’t make you who you are. And so even though you might be an IP lawyer at a big firm for a few months, that doesn’t mean that’s your life. You can change at any time, and the consequences of changing are actually so minuscule. I’ve done it so many times now. It feels like a big deal before you make the choice to go there. And it feels like a big deal when you make the choice to leave. But six months on it doesn’t feel like a choice at all. It just feels like life’s natural course. |
| DT: | I think the shape of a legal career is very different today than it was even 10 years ago. |
| AB: | 100%. |
| DT: 41:00 | There’s a lot more mobility. Now after working at a large law firm you worked in a NewLaw practice. |
| AB: | Yeah. Startups. |
| DT: | Yeah. |
| AB: | Very sexy. |
| DT: | Both working for startups and working in a startup. |
| AB:
42:00 | It was startup upon startup. It was meta-startup! It was very cool, working with some really exciting clients – like that were doing some amazing things and then working with some clients that weren’t doing some very amazing things, just immolating investor money. But that’s the nature of startups. You’re probing to see whether there’s a market for it and it’s like at that coalface. And I think you like working with startups at Assured as well, so you know what I’m getting at. It’s very exciting to get on a call with a client who is just so passionate about their product. The downside is, obviously, startups don’t have much money. So it was very illuminating seeing how hard it is to get people to pay for legals when they’ve got no money in the bank. But it was very interesting and I was there for two years, roughly – same time that I was at Assured, probably worth mentioning. I was only at the big firm for maybe six months. Like I did not last very long at all. Which at the time felt like a bit of a failure, but I think that was also the chip on the shoulder that I referenced earlier like I felt like I had to do better. |
| DT: | You said that a big part of that was the economics and the way the firm is financially designed, that it’s built around billables and utilisation. At a NewLaw practice that’s often not the case, is it? Often NewLaw practices really focus on billing in a way that isn’t focused on billables. They often promote fixed fees or even subscription models. |
| AB: | Yep. |
| DT: | So how does that change the culture and how does that change sort of the day-to-day work? |
| AB:
43:00
44:00 | Changes it dramatically. As soon as you’re off time and materials, you are extremely conscious of your time and materials because you can’t recover them all. You are focused on the deliverable, which is good in many cases for certain kinds of work. And it’s terrible for other kinds of work. So to give some examples, drafting services contracts or commercial contracts – generally great to be fixed fee. That makes sense. And you’re creating, like, a boilerplate contract for the client to use. But doing a capital raising project – extremely difficult to fix fee that. Because it’s just so many variables, so many unknowns, and so intensive in terms of time. It was good and bad, but an interesting model. Yeah, there was a subscription model which is really good for startups. I think that makes a lot of sense just to take the stigma away from a phone call when they know it’s not going to cost anything just to try and figure out whether there’s a legal issue or not. Kind of illuminated to me like how many business people don’t know what a legal risk is and what one isn’t. They’ll call up describing some mundane situation then casually drop that they’ve breached this contract that has an indemnity in it and they’ve got no idea and they’re like; “oh, the client’s mad, but they can’t do anything, right?“. It’s like; “well, actually they could“. And they’re like; “oh, got it”. Or, they’re like super stressed about some employee issue which is just like totally resolved by giving them four weeks notice and that’s it. So it’s like just interesting to see what’s a problem, what’s not? So yeah, it was very illuminating and it was good and it changed based on the model that the business runs, right? The amount of times that I sat there time charging at a big firm for work that I thought was questionable, but got paid for, versus the amount of times that I’ve worked way past the fixed fee budget at a small firm – it just felt wrong in both scenarios. So there’s always downsides and upsides of each commercial model. But yeah, I think for a graduate – probably not as big a problem. I think as a grad, if you’re not working at a big firm, try not to worry too much about the billables. Like every lawyer you are working with will be absolutely paranoid about it. But for you, and I think until you’re at that one and a half to two year mark, the focus really should be on learning things properly – regardless of the commercial structure of the firm. |
| DT:
45:00 | Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. Often because there is such a focus on billable targets as a KPI there’s a lot of anxiety about them, and at the same time there’s anxiety about “well, I don’t want to record six hours for having completed this task because it would only take you two hours. Even though I spent all day on it, I’m just going to record two hours, and then it looks like I’ve only been working for a third of the day”. So I would agree with your advice completely. For graduate lawyers, for young lawyers, you can’t really control the amount of work you’re allocated. You can’t bring clients in, at least not unless you have a tremendous network at a very early stage in your career. You can’t control how much work you’re doing except to put up your hand and say, “I need some more work because I don’t have enough on.” And you can’t really control how long it takes you because you’re still learning. Focus on the learning, as you say, put everything down and let the billing get sorted out by the person who’s responsible for that. |
| AB: | Yeah. |
| DT: | I think young lawyers worry far too much – not that it’s their fault – that they’re caused to worry far too much about how much they’re billing in both directions, that they’re not billing enough and simultaneously that they’re recording too much time. |
| AB:
46:00 | It’s the boogeyman in all practice, I think, the idea of billables. And I think if you’re surrounded by lawyers who you are supposed to be looking up to and learn from, and they’re stressed about billables, you’re like; “oh, I must emulate this stress“. You emulate both the good and bad parts of your mentors and if it’s a super big focus, you’ll inevitably find that sort of stressor in the back of your head. But you’ve got to remember to put the silencer on it and just say; “this is not my problem, my problem is to get everything right and learn as much as I can and then decide what I want to do.” And that’s a joyous thing that will go away after a few years of practice. You will need to start worrying about billables and commerciality, and you’ll have less time to really focus on learning. So just make the most of that learning period, and don’t waste the time stressing about; “yeah. Should I put this down for five? It’s probably more of a three hour task“. Yeah, it’s not your problem. And if you’re working with someone who makes it your problem, consider whether that’s a place that you want to work because they’re now delegating a commercial choice about the business to someone who’s just joined the profession. What does that say about them? |
| DT: | It is interesting that you say that was still something that really characterised your experience working in a NewLaw practice that isn’t really built around billables. It’s interesting that that stress comes in either way; whether you’re time charging or not. And as you say, once you’re not charging on a time charge basis, you might think about it even more. |
| AB: 47:00 | Yeah. Ironically. Yeah. Well because there’s always budgets to be hit, right? Everything is a business, like law firms aren’t charities. And they need to make money and you need to be commercial. And I think it’s – whether you do fixed fee, there’ll be a total sum of closed projects at the end of each month. And you need to look at what the target is and if you want to get a raise or you want to go up in seniority, you need to be hitting those KPIs. So it’s inevitable that it’ll work its way in some way. And like I said before, it will become relevant to you one day if you want to stay in the profession, but it shouldn’t be relevant to you right out of the gate from day one. And if it is, you’re focusing on the wrong things. |
| DT: | It sounds like in terms of the kind of work you were doing, your experience in a boutique firm and your experience in a NewLaw practice was actually quite similar in that there was a lot of breadth in what you were doing and it challenged you to go into areas that maybe you weren’t familiar with. How would you distinguish the work between those two modes of practice? |
| AB: 48:00
49:00 | Yeah, it’s a tricky one because like you said, they’re so close. But I think for me, the startup law firm that I worked at was more of a holistic approach to the client. So it would be like a client comes on, is onboarded as a member with us, and we do a wholesale analysis of their business. We look at their IP, we look at their employment contracts, we look at their supplier contracts, we look at their runway for cash. We look at their IP protections and stuff. So it’s all that sort of all encompassing analysis, but at a light level. And so you would find that so many businesses out there, so many small to medium sized businesses and startups just have no legal protection across the board. And so a little bit of protection everywhere is better. Whereas I think at a boutique it was like; “we have this specific problem, we need help from experts, but we don’t want to pay obscene money to do it. So can you do it with a lower overhead with the same level of quality?” And that’s what Assured did, it was like; “we can deliver to you the best niche advice on these particular matters“. Whereas I think at a startup law firm, if you had a problem like that, it’d be like; “we don’t have anyone with deep enough expertise. We can get you halfway there”. So I think, for me, I found that the startup culture was better for broader experience, which set me up for in-house because it was like I asked more questions about things people aren’t thinking about. Whereas at Assured I was trained to go deeper on particular issues and develop that knowledge which is just not promoted at a startup firm. It’s like; “the client doesn’t have the money, time or inclination to hear you pontificate about this issue”. Whereas at Assured it might be like; “this client is actually so concerned, they need advice down to the dot on what they should do and your recommendation“. |
| DT:
59:00 | We’ve talked about a lot of different roles that you’ve held in a lot of different fields of commercial legal practice. And something that really strikes me about this is that although you followed a particular path through those, that path looks very different to how it might have looked, as we said, 10 years ago. It used to be the case that commercial law careers really started at a big firm, and once you had that level of expertise, you might be able to work in a boutique firm. And then once you had 10 years under your belt, you could go and work in-house. And there was a kind of set of experienced prerequisites for all of these different kinds of organisations. But what’s fantastic now for new graduates and for aspiring lawyers, is that there are so many junior roles in all sorts of legal practices and businesses. There are more junior entry level in-house counsel roles now than there have ever been. I think you could probably work in an entry level role in any of the organisations that you’ve described, an in-house legal team, a boutique firm, a large firm, a suburban firm, a NewLaw practice. Notwithstanding that, do you think there’s a place that aspiring commercial lawyers should start? Do you think there’s a role that, looking back at all of the roles you’ve had, set you up for success? Do you think there’s something that aspiring commercial lawyers should try to do first? |
| AB: | No. Because none of it matters. |
| DT: | Yeah |
| AB:
51:00 | That’s my advice. None of it matters. It feels like it matters. It feels like it’s the most important decision you’ve ever made, but in reality, society and the way the profession is structured now is way more conducive to just going anywhere and doing anything. If you know the right people and you have the drive, you can do anything. Like there’s a period of time where I worked in policy for the New South Wales Parliament, I also interviewed as an investment manager at a fund manager. And I didn’t get the role because of complex reasons, but I basically said that their best investment idea was terrible. Which turns out is not a good way to get another interview. But, like you can do anything. The idea that we can’t do certain things, it’s entirely cerebral. And this; “okay if I choose to go for a big law firm, I’m going to be this kind of person”. Again, this is the issue of associating a job with one’s personality and purpose in life. |
| DT: | Yeah. |
| AB:
52:00 | As soon as you do that, you’re setting yourself up for failure, if you just look at your options available, make the best choice that you can in the circumstances you’ve got, then you’ve already followed the right process, you’ve done the right thing, the outcome will be what it will be. The worst thing you can do is just be paralysed by choice, thinking that all these choices are just absolutely critical and it’s going to change your life and make you who you are; it’s bizarre. So follow my path or don’t – like it doesn’t matter in the end, you’ll find something that you enjoy doing eventually or switch careers or do whatever. Like it’s just a job at the end of the day. So try not to stress too much about it would be my suggestion. |
| DT:
53:00 | Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. There’s so much mobility in a legal career nowadays. The conventional wisdom used to be you can’t go in-house too early because once you go in-house, the opportunities for progression are so much smaller because in-house teams are small and you’ll just work in-house in the same role for a long time, until eventually a general counsel role opens up somewhere. But that conventional wisdom no longer really holds. In-house teams can be very large. There can be a lot of internal progression even within an in-house team. It’s no longer a one-way pipeline. You can go in-house and then go back out to work in private practice and then go back in-house again. So I think there’s that level of mobility now where you really can’t go wrong. I think if you want to try a role out as your first, or second or third legal role, you should just go ahead and do it and know that there’s nothing you can’t undo. There’s nothing, you can’t try again and all of that experience will be valuable. We’ve talked about a lot of different roles that you’ve had and you’ve given us some tips about each of those. I’m going to give you a nice, easy challenge now – Aden just synthesise all of that just into one nice little sound bite. One bit of advice for our listeners that you’d want to leave them with. |
| AB:
54:00 | The one thing that I never saw coming and I should have was the hedonic treadmill. And for those that are not familiar with the concept, basically we have this thing in our brain – hedonic adaptation – where we think that terrible scenarios and really great scenarios will last longer than they really do. So when you’re in the depths of despair, it feels like the despair will never end. But of course, the traumatic experience ends up being much shorter. And then; same thing when you go grass is greener. You go and have this elated experience, but of course, the elation doesn’t last for as long as you think it does. And I thought, “ah, this job is so miserable. I’ve got to get out”. And I move and I feel great just for a little bit. But then, of course, I end up back at baseline on the treadmill. Like I don’t go anywhere. You can sprint, you can slow down, but you stay on the treadmill and you don’t really go anywhere in terms of your, I don’t know, like excitedness or whatever. So just keep that in mind. You’ll join a new job, you’ll feel fantastic. It might feel flat after a bit. That’s okay. You might join a job; it might suck for a bit. You might be going through a rough patch. You’ll get through it okay. Like I look back on really like a traumatic experience at Assured, where I was like in a courtroom trying to do a – I don’t know, I think it was like defending some kind of privilege application from a client. And it was just like such a mundane thing. It was like before a Registrar downstairs in the basement of the Supreme Court. And then, of course, the counsel on the other side was like; “ah, no, actually I don’t think I agree with your privilege claim over these documents. Let’s take this upstairs”. Ended up in like a room full of silks before a Chief Justice. And I was just like; “this is absolutely mortifying”. Like I had done very few court appearances. |
| DT: 55:00 | We’ve all had those terrible early court appearances. I remember having to run up to a corporations judge to appear for a 17th defendant or something. It was casual Friday. I was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. I put on a sports coat and a tie over the plaid shirt. |
| AB: | Just chaotic! |
| DT: | I was the only solicitor appearing in a room full of silks. |
| AB: | Oh my gosh. |
| DT: | And I felt like I was wearing a rainbow wig and a red nose sitting there. I looked so out of place. I felt so out of my depth but those experiences are important. As you say, they feel awful in the moment but we learn something from them, and they’re not as bad as they loom large in your head. |
| AB: | We’re laughing about it now. |
| DT: | Yeah, exactly. |
| AB: | And I think in the moment I was like; “I need to get out of this firm. I need to leave, I need to stop doing litigation. I’m never going to do it again“. That was… ended up being true. And I left shortly afterwards and I didn’t do any litigation after that. But I don’t feel bad about it. It was just a normal experience and I can laugh about it now, and it’s just illuminating on life’s journey of figuring out what you want to do. I jumped in the pool and it was really cold and I immediately went for the ladder, which is fine. Don’t feel afraid to go for the ladder. |
| DT: 56:00 | Yeah. And I think that point about the hedonic treadmill is a good one to remind us that there is a great deal of mobility, but it’s possible to change too quickly, isn’t it as well? It’s possible to have that immediate visceral reaction to something and change before you’ve given it a chance before you’ve learnt as much as you can. It’s also possible to lose that initial luster when you’ve moved to a greener pasture and jump ship again to recapture that feeling before, again, you’ve gotten everything you can out of that role. |
| AB:
57:00 | Yep. And I think that the best way that’s illustrated is if you’re moving from a mid-tier to a mid-tier to a mid-tier. What are you doing? If you’re going; you’ve got that grass is greener mentality; “I’m just going to move, might take a little bit of a pay bump” – of course we know all the research – a little 15 grand pay bump. You just have salary bracket creep, and then you end up having a bit more of an expensive lifestyle and everything feels the same. And then of course, you’re at just another law firm that’s fundamentally the same. Or if you’re moving between boutiques or you’re moving between big firms like you’re not going to get anything too new. Whereas I think if you’re moving to a completely new environment, you’re getting a good idea of; “okay, do I like this style?”. It’s a drastic change and it might be crap, or it might be really good, but you don’t know until you try. Whereas if you’re just moving amongst the same environment I don’t really see the utility in that. You’re right, there’s a time to change. It can be too soon, but I think if you’re going to change, jump as high as you can or jump in a completely different pool. |
| DT: | Well, Aden thanks so much for joining me today on Hearsay to talk about your varied and diverse career in law and hopefully our student listeners have learned a lot and can take a lot away from that for their own careers. |
| AB: | Yep. If you have any questions, hit me up on Linkedin, send me a DM. |
| DT: | That’s very generous. We’ll include Aden’s LinkedIn link in the show notes. Thanks very much, Aden. |
| AB: | No worries. Thanks. |
| DT:
58:00
| As always, you’ve been listening to Hearsay the Legal Podcast. I’d like to thank our guest, Aden Bates, for coming on the show. Now, this episode is a bit special – it’s designed to assist young lawyers with career and personal development and it’s a good guide of where to go, what to expect, and who might suit different types of legal practice. As you well know, if you’re an Australian legal practitioner, you can claim one Continuing Professional Development point for listening to this episode. Whether an activity entitles you to claim a CPD unit is self-assessed, but we suggest this episode entitles you to claim a professional skills point. More information on claiming and tracking your points on Hearsay can be found on our website. Hearsay the Legal Podcast is, as always, brought to you by Lext Australia, a legal innovation company that makes the law easier to access and easier to practice, and that includes your CPD. Finally, before you go, I’d like to ask you a favour. If you like this episode and the other episodes of Hearsay that you’ve listened to, please leave us a Google Review. It helps other listeners find us and that means that we can keep making the great content that you love. Thanks for listening to Hearsay and I’ll see you on the next episode. |
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