What's your job about?
Thomson Geer is a large corporate law firm, with offices in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Our firm has expertise in a range of practice areas including, but not limited to litigation and dispute resolution, employment and workplace relations, banking and finance, tax, property and intellectual property.
I am a lawyer in the intellectual property, technology and regulatory team at Thomson Geer in Adelaide. I report to a relatively large team of four partners with other senior and junior lawyers who also operate in the team. Every day is a little bit different and I often have multiple tasks to attend to. For instance, I could be researching an area of copyright in order to assist a partner with advice to a client, whilst simultaneously amending a privacy policy to align with the Australian Privacy Principles.
I have also had the benefit of attending numerous client meetings in which I take notes and prepare file notes. I have attended meetings where the initial stages of a project are being explored, and I have also attended meetings where large scale negotiations have been taking place over a long period of time. Therefore, depending on what type of meeting it is my role can change.
As part of Thomson Geer's graduate program, I also completed a rotation in the property team. Similar to my role in the intellectual property, technology and regulatory team, my role varied day to day in the property team and involved tasks such as researching areas of property law, drafting letters to clients, lodging documents at Land Services and drafting property based agreements (ie leases).
What's your background?
I grew up in Bondi, New South Wales and then moved to Somerton Park, South Australia in my later childhood years. I have attended a mixture of public and private schools and graduated from Sacred Heart College in 2015. At school, I loved subjects based on the humanities such as English and history. In year 11, I was invited to complete a year 12 subject as part of my year 11 curriculum in which I chose legal studies. As I had completed one year 12 subject in year 11, I was then offered the opportunity to study at Flinders University in their extension studies program in year 12. This program allowed me to gain a taste of university life and explore some opportunities outside of the SACE curriculum (whilst still counting towards my ATAR). In this program, I undertook one subject each semester which I chose Law in Australian Society and Introduction to Law and Justice. I believe these initial experiences are what sparked my interest to study law at university.
In 2016, I started a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Adelaide. At university, I chose a wide range of electives whilst undertaking the core subjects. I wanted to learn as much as possible about the different aspects of law and what potentially could be a good fit for me as a long term career path.
Whilst at university, I also maintained a few different jobs including being a waiter at a café, being a catering assistant at an aged care facility and being a corporate receptionist at the head of the office of a non-for-profit. However, when I reached my penultimate year of university I was keen to start getting a taste of the law in practice. I applied for a few different clerkships over the year and was lucky enough to obtain a few in commercial law, including one at Thomson Geer. I completed my Thomson Geer clerkship in January / February 2020 in the intellectual property, technology and regulatory team and was then offered a graduate position to start in 2021.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes! Thomson Geer has a diverse workforce with people who have all different backgrounds. Whilst a law degree is a pre-requisite, many of my colleagues have second degrees in different specialities such as science, business, international studies etc. This means I am able to engage with a range of lawyers who have different skills in other areas. This encourages collaboration between teams and allows for many interesting discussions and perspectives on different areas within the law. In saying this, I believe that anyone with a good work ethic and an ability to think critically about a topic would be successful in a commercial law environment.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The most enjoyable part of my job is assisting clients in what is usually an exciting time in their business. For instance, the type of work we do day-to-day allows for businesses to expand, streamline processes or collaborate with other businesses to gain knowledge and skills. Being a part of these types of agreements is a highly rewarding process, especially when a matter concludes after months of negotiation and hard work.
What are the limitations of your job?
I have found that working in a team with multiple partners and senior lawyers, it can sometimes be difficult to balance multiple tasks at once and time manage appropriately. This was particularly challenging in the first few months of my graduate program.
However, I found that it is best to communicate with my team about my capacity to take on new work and be transparent about the tasks that I already have on the go. This provides the partner and/or senior lawyer with a timeline of when they can expect the work to be completed.
The positive side of this is that I am usually engaging with several different tasks and this makes every day different, which is exciting!
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