Legal Practice Areas
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Banking & Finance
Work in banking law centres on commercial loan agreements – the documentation of lending money and arranging its signing and completion. Work in capital markets involves the issue of ‘debt’ or ‘equity’ securities and related areas such as securitisation, repackaging and structured finance, plus the whole range of ‘derivatives’ products. ‘Debt’ relates to publicly tradeable financial instruments, which are listed on a stock exchange, but traded off the exchange by bond traders. A company raises money by issuing bonds and a bank or group of banks will underwrite the issue. The bonds will pay interest until they are redeemable. ‘Equity’ is slightly sexier than debt. It involves public offerings (including IPOS) of shares and company flotations. As shares are riskier and more volatile than bonds, the returns are higher.
Both debt and equity transactions involve a company presenting itself to investors by way of a prospectus and documents recording the issue of security for cash. A typical capital markets transaction might involve, say, a company raising several million dollars via the issue of bonds sold into the market or a public offering of shares. The proceeds might then used for the purposes of the business or to acquire another company. Lawyers will assist with the structuring of the deal and ensure compliance with securities laws.
Type of work
Top-level banking and capital markets work is concentrated in the Australian financial centres – Sydney and Melbourne. The most complex transactions are handled by the biggest firms, whose clients tend to be large lending institutions.
The demands on lawyers are intensive because of the cyclical nature of transactional work. A normal 50 hour
week can rise to 75 or 100 hours as a deal nears completion. However, banking lawyers speak of the buzz of completing a deal. It’s a major motivational force. One banking solicitor described most clients as “very driven people, but pretty decent.
They expect high standards.” A capital markets lawyer working in-house at a large international bank echoed his sentiments on the buzz: “My work is exciting, fast and snappy. I have to make decisions quickly and give on the spot advice to a wide variety of people.”
It is widely accepted that banking and capital markets are not law-intensive areas of practice. They are not regulated heavily by case law and statutes, and you won’t be doing masses of research into black letter law. The more senior you get, the more time you spend managing deals and the less time you spend drafting. International travel may be part of your working life if you join a firm handling cross-border deals.
Skills needed
• Practical intelligence
• Analytical skills
• Interest in business and international finance
• Ability to dedicate to the task
• Accuracy and care
• Capacity to do routine work in the early days
• Love the rush of ADRenalin
• Stamina
• Good interpersonal skills
You must have confidence in yourself and be quite tough as sometimes people can be unpleasant in the way they negotiate with you. The full-on nature of the work may affect your personal life at times, so do make sure that international finance and business interests you. To prime yourself for a career as a finance lawyer, read the business pages in your daily newspaper. Work experience in the finance sector will help you gain a better idea of how you’ll take to this world.
Career options
Salaries in private practice and related areas are high. Some deals keep you in the office from 9-7pm, while some keep you there into the early hours of the morning. However, through your choice of firm, you can gravitate towards the type of deal that suits you. At the largest firms, lawyers specialise to a high degree. For some this has real appeal, but for others it’s a turn off. In smaller practices, lawyers are broader-based and enjoy a variety of deals, albeit lower profile.
Some solicitors view banking law as an ideal platform for a subsequent career in financial markets. Even at quite a junior level, secondments to banks are available from many firms and can give a taste of things to come. Moves in-house at banks are common, especially in capital markets., Where some find the job gets them “One step closer to the business; thinking of deals and knocking ideas around.” There’s less drafting and a lot of ad hoc queries from different parts of the bank. Financial services regulation now employs ever-greater numbers of compliance lawyers. As credit risk departments and capital adequacy requirements become increasingly important, so does the advisory role of the lawyers involved.
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Competition & Trade Practices
The basic aim of competition law, and of the Australian regulatory authority (the ACCC), is to ensure that markets function effectively on the basis of fair and open competition. The main piece of legislation is the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth), which addresses anti-competitive agreements (such as price-fixing cartels) and the abuse of dominant market positions (such as excessive or predatory pricing). The ACCC makes it their business to bust open these smoke-filled room deals. In addition to industry-wide enquiries, the behaviour of individual companies is scrutinised, particularly those who dominate their market and flex their commercial muscle so as to harm consumers.
Type of work
Non-litigious competition work commonly takes the form of merger control advice and clearance for M&A deals, or structuring commercial agreements and other business practices so as to comply with competition laws. It is fast moving and high profile work. Litigious work refers to litigation which has a competition element, while work defending companies against regulatory investigations (such as cartel investigations, ‘abuse of market dominance cases’ or industry investigations) falls somewhere in between. Competition lawyers traditionally specialised in either litigious or non-litigious work. However, these days, they have to be expert in both in order to be fully effective.
Competition law requires the lawyer to gain a thorough understanding of how industries and their markets operate. One competition partner at a leading UK firm couldn’t stress this enough. For him, it’s what appeals most about the work: over the last ten years, he’s learnt a fair bit about retail, the music industry, pay TV, telecoms, public transport, cinema, newspapers and perfume. “I’ve never been bored by the job. You analyse companies and sectors in order to understand why they do what they do. There’s a comParison with what management consultants, such as mckinsey, do. We look at everything from the minutiae to the grand plans.”
The ACCC has broad powers under the Trade Practices Act to root out anti-competitive behaviour. Our UK partner told us: “There’s a much more contentious feel to the work. And the potential exposure to heavy corporate fines and personal criminal sanctions, including imprisonment, really concentrates the client’s mind.”
Skills needed
• Clear, analytical mind
• Good judgment and confident in relying
on gut instincts
• Articulate, both orally and on paper
• Good mediation and lobbying skills
• Thoroughness
• Attention to detail
• Numeracy
• Decisiveness
• Linguistic ability
• Enthusiasm
Diplomacy, common sense and a desire to understand business are prerequisite traits. Junior lawyers work directly under the guidance of experienced partners and in the early years can’t expect to fly far by themselves. Web research, ‘market’ research, talking to clients about their business, honing drafting skills and developing gut instinct are plenty to be getting on with. The work involves the exercise of advocacy skills, both written and oral. If you enjoy constructing an argument for an essay and then expressing it clearly, backing up your points with the necessary evidence, you’re already on the right road. Academically gifted and skill-rich lawyers populate the area. Not only is there a lot of law to learn, the principles of economics and international trade have to become second nature. However, as our UK partner told us: “clients are extremely grateful; our work makes a real difference. Competition lawyers, like tax and financial services lawyers, are regarded as premium advisers.”
Career options
Competition law is not available at every corporate law firm, and the type of firm will determine the nature of work available. For example, heavy-duty matters (especially merger work) are usually handled by the largest city firms.
Few competition lawyers leave private practice, although some do go overseas. Usually only global giants like Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Vodafone can support a specialist team in-house. Some lawyers might turn gamekeeper and join the ACCC. One lawyer spoke of the ACCC having developed a “revolving door policy” whereby lawyers move to the regulator, gain experience and go back out into
private practice.
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Construction & Projects
Construction
Construction lawyers traditionally drafted contracts for developers and construction companies. Buildings would go up, but often the parties would fall into dispute. They would call back the lawyers to commence litigation that sometimes took years. Other parties, such as architects and subcontractors, would get caught up in the dispute, so that everyone spent huge amounts of money and working relationships ended up in tatters.
Type of work
The main aspects of construction law – developing the contractual arrangements prior to building work (“Front-end” work) and Dispute Resolution when it all goes wrong (“back-end” work) are still the staple. However, there is a different approach taken in construction these days – partnering – where all parties try to achieve a common goal rather than sue the hide off each other. It seems to have had an effect, with parties increasingly working with each other when things go wrong. For example, most contracts now contain a mandatory arbitration procedure to be adopted in case of dispute. One solicitor has said that now, “lawyers drafting contracts are really put under pressure. Client’s don’t want you to pick up too many points or cause too many headaches, but you do have to advise the client of where the risks lie.”
It’s an unpretentious area of the law, according to one female construction partner. For the record, she thinks it’s an area that’s just as open to women as it is to men.
Skills needed
• Attention to detail
• Excellent drafting
• Good judgment
• Down-to-earth attitude
• Comfortable with technical information
• Industry background a major advantage
• Stamina
• Imagination
• Team worker
• Good interpersonal skills
Some pretty seminal legal decisions have arisen out of construction disputes – they deal with complex relationships between parties, which define the boundaries of contract and tort. You need to have an affinity with case law and be prepared to keep up to date with the reports as well as industry trends and thinking. You need to combine legal know-how with practical advice and real imagination.
It’s important that you get on with all sorts of people. Our construction partner explains: “You might be dealing with some real boffins – for example, geotechnical engineers and structural engineers who produce reports that you have to interpret. Some contractor and subcontractor clients are extremely down to earth; on the other hand, you have clients who are corporate types or in-house lawyers with whom you must speak on a more sophisticated level.” Some lawyers make a name for themselves based partly on their social skills. This is not belittling their legal talents, but generally speaking, construction industry clients like to bond with their advisors. A lawyer who can put their client at ease and be ‘one of the lads’ (male or female) goes far.
Projects
Major projects are located worldwide and projects lawyers hail from every major jurisdiction. Whether it is a power station or a motorway, specialist construction lawyers work hand in hand with finance and corporate lawyers to enable projects to come to fruition.
In Australia, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), a part of the Public Private Partnerships (PPP), is an important source of work. PFI introduces private funding and management into areas that were previously the domain of government, such as the building and operation of hospitals.
Type of work
Projects vary from oil pipelines in far-flung places to PFI prisons in Western Australia. The exact nature of the legal work depends on the type, size and location of the project and the firm’s clients. Some consistently act for the project company – usually a special purpose company established to build, own and operate, say, a power station. Often the project company is a joint venture between a number of sponsors who contribute equity to part-fund the project. Project sponsors could include the manufacturer of the gas turbines installed in the power station, the construction company that will erect the plant, and the power company that will buy the electricity. The company could also be partially owned by a government body or banks.
Other firms act for the project promoter – the organisation that commissions the project. It could be a trust that wants a new hospital or a foreign government that wants a
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privately financed motorway. Then there are the firms that act purely on the finance side for banks, guarantors, export credit agencies, governments, and international funding agencies. Other categories of client include the contractors, operators and so on. Each party requires its own
legal representation.
One construction partner explained just how long projects could go on for. After the initial tender process, in which bids are built up over a couple of years, the successful bidder is selected to manage the project. It then has to secure the finance, obtain the necessary planning permission and agree construction, service and employment contracts. Lawyers advising on any of these contracts must understand the big picture. They have to see how changing one contractual term will have a knock-on effect throughout the entire transaction.
Skills needed
• Prepared to travel
• Commercial awareness
• Patience
• Tact and diplomacy
• Strong client skills
• Good on contract and tort
• Good drafting
• Comfortable with long, complex documents
• Stamina
If you enjoy the challenge of creating a scheme and figuring out all its possibilities and pitfalls, this may be the right area for you. The ability to work with a team of people, whether they are your own colleagues and clients or other lawyers and professionals, funders or subcontractors, is crucial. As projects go on for years, you need to build relationships with all those involved.
Career options
The construction industry has lawyers working in-house. The role may be as general corporate counsel or more specifically as a litigator. Some lawyers also join clients in a project management role.
Corporate / M&A
Corporate transactions are the lifeblood of commercial firms and experienced corporate lawyers are among the highest paid in the profession.
Type of work
The largest firms act for companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (the ASX), while smaller firms tend to advise leading private companies and a handful of listed companies.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate restructurings are the core business and are interlinked with finance (banking and capital markets work). Companies fund their acquisitions by a variety of means. They may restructure, disposing of certain assets not considered essential to their core business. If they are privately held, they may raise finance by ‘going public’ – offering shares to the public and institutional investors on the ASX. If they are already public companies, they may make a rights issue (an offer of new shares). They may also raise money via debt, such as loans from the market (bonds) or from banks or other Financial Institutions. A complex, high-value deal may need to be financed by a combination of these methods.
Irrespective of the type of deal, there are three key phases to the work: negotiating and drafting the agreements, arranging the financing, and carrying out ‘due diligence’. Due diligence is a time-consuming but necessary task to ensure the accuracy of information passed from the target to the bidder or from the company raising capital to the funder. If a target claims to be the largest baked beans canner in the country, then due diligence will reveal whether or not this is true and whether or not there is outstanding litigation or any other factors that could harm profitability after a takeover or buyout.
Private companies have few shareholders (owners), whereas ASX-listed companies can have millions. This makes the latter vulnerable to hostile takeover bids from rival companies seeking a controlling stake. Chapter 6 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) regulates both hostile and friendly takeovers, and M&A lawyers get to know this chapter inside out.
There are a number of key differences between the work carried out at different types of firms. If you work for one of the largest firms, you might become very specialised, for example in IPOS or public takeovers. If you work for a smaller firm, you must be able to handle all types of transactions. You might work on an ipo one day, be acting for the target of a public takeover the next and handle a private acquisition the next.
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There are other key differences as well, most notable hours and the increased chances of a junior lawyer getting close to the front-line action. The largest firms handle the biggest transactions so, naturally, a junior solicitor will not carry a huge amount of responsibility. As one lawyer told us: “there will always be an element of tedium on any job. If you are a junior working on a $2 billion deal, the reality is that you are not going to get much more responsibility than some research and managing a data room.” Essential yet administrative tasks will hopefully be interspersed with greater responsibility on smaller transactions.
Team spirit is essential. Working three 18-hour days in a row may be rare, but it does happen. Much has been said about the killer hours in corporate, about all-nighters and the loss of life and love in the quest for career progression. It’s true that corporate departments tend to work the longest hours, but it’s equally true that market conditions affect the time spent at work. When the market is buoyant, you can expect to work long hours, but when M&A activity is flat, you will be far less busy.
Skills needed
• Not for the faint-hearted
• Stamina
• A touch of the glory seeker
• Handling demanding, intelligent clients
• Comfortable with big price tags
• Good presentation
• Decisiveness
• Confidence
• Tact and clear communication
• Eye for detail
• A good all-rounder
Most corporate lawyers accept that there’s a bit of brash ego-led behaviour around, but it’s inevitable when you’ve got highly motivated lawyers acting for equally motivated clients under tight deadlines.
Some specialist lawyers contend that a corporate lawyer’s job is all about doing deals and has very little to do with pure law. As a corporate lawyer, you do have to be a jack of all trades. Merger control, IP/IT, employment, and tax all need to be understood and the basics communicated to the client. Even though the corporate lawyer will call upon the skills of specialists, they need to know when to do that.
One lawyer highlighted that “general people skills – getting on with others” are vital. You’ll spend a lot of time in meetings, much of it thrashing out points of agreement, but also making small talk with your client.
Those who excel in corporate work seem to thrive in pressured situations. One lawyer told us: “You have to keep driving yourself when sometimes all you want to do is stop.” Deadlines are almost always genuine (such as the end of an accounting year), and sometimes this means there aren’t enough hours in the day. If you’re going to have a problem with the working pattern, you should choose another area of law.
Career options
Larger firms allow qualified lawyers to be seconded to major clients. A sound grounding in corporate finance makes an excellent Springboard for working in industry. Many lawyers move in-house to major companies, tempted by decent hours and salaries.
Some lawyers join the banking world, either as in-house lawyers, corporate finance executives or analysts. Those who make the transition from lawyer to client enjoy the dynamic pace of life and are glad to shed the advisory role. Such moves generally occur early on, but high-profile moves of senior partners to investment banks do happen. Company secretarial positions suit lawyers with a taste for variety and responsibility. The best advice to budding corporate lawyers is to make the financial review your friend. You don’t need to study it religiously, just make sure you know what the big stories are.
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Employment
If you are fascinated by human nature, curious about the forces at play in employer/employee relations and eager to be involved in cases provoking legislative and social changes affecting everyone who has ever had a job, then employment law may be right for you.
Type of work
The work of an employment lawyer is a rich and varied mix of advisory, pre-emptive, contractual and litigious work. Litigious matters are heard in the Industrial Relations Commission (the Irc) or the courts. In the Irc, employees (‘applicants’) may claim for redundancy pay, unfair dismissal, breach of contract, and sex, race or disability discrimination against their employers (‘respondents’). Although the awards in most cases will be capped, the high value of some awards makes it easy to see why individuals are increasingly willing to bring claims and why employers defend them.
Although acting for employees doesn’t always put a lawyer on the side of the angels, those acting for trade unions and their members are often ideologically motivated. A lawyer may find himself or herself representing thousands of union members in their campaigns to change working practices or the law on, say, pension rights for part-time workers. Employment law is, by its nature, highly politicised, regulating, as it does, the relationship between workers and employers. One partner at a firm which acts mainly for employers emphasises that: “It’s one of the few subjects that can combine topical issues of politics, industrial relations and people alongside the intellectual disciplines studied at University.”
Employment lawyers see themselves as somewhat different from corporate lawyers even though they find themselves working closely with them on transactions, with employment advice increasingly becoming a vital ingredient in the deal. The hours are usually not as relentless as those experienced in the corporate. One lawyer pointed out: “The worst thing about an employment lawyer’s hours is not so much the number of them, but the unpredictability of when they might have to be put in.”
Skills needed
• Being a people person
• Sensitivity and calmness
• Sense of humour
• Versatility
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills
• A talent for advocacy
• Practicality
• An ability to quickly assimilate changes in strategy
and advice
• Knowing when to be tough
• Detailed knowledge of relevant law
Our lawyer points out: “The law is so fast-moving that continuous education and development is vital for the employment law practitioner. No day is boring.” Our partner agrees: “A good memory is essential. However, in some cases, the legal solution to a problem is not the cheapest or quickest solution for the client, so you need good business judgment and good instincts to know which one to choose. It’s very people-oriented, so patience, tact, empathy and the ability to inspire confidence is essential.”
Career options
Those hoping for a career as an employment lawyer face stiff competition, as most commercial firms have only a small, dedicated department. However, even the smallest firms have clients seeking employment advice. Like most litigation, the volume of work increases in times of recession. As our partner confirms: “In times of recession we get instructions on redundancies and terminations. In times of economic strength there’s more corporate-led advice needed.” Our lawyer agrees, saying: “The chameleonic nature of the employment lawyer’s work seems to add a bit of job security.”
Some employers have in-house employment lawyers, but more usually a move in-house would combine employment law with general commercial advice. Know-how lawyers are dedicated to keeping their colleagues up to date on changes in the law and draft client newsletters.
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Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property law can be divided into patent work (hard IP), which involves the protection of inventions and processes, and non-patent work (soft IP), which involves trademarks, design rights, copyright, passing off, anti-counterfeiting and confidential information.
Type of work
There are three main types of Australian Intellectual Property rights providing owners with a complete monopoly. Patents protect new, industrially applicable inventions. They provide the proprietor with a monopoly to work the invention for a certain period. A registered trademark provides the owner with a limited monopoly to use that mark on certain goods or services. Finally, a registered design gives the owner an exclusive right to use the design. There are also more limited rights. For example, a work attracting copyright protection gives the owner of the copyright the right to prevent others copying the work.
IP clients include manufacturers and suppliers of hi-tech, engineering, pharmaceutical and agrochemical products, leading brand owners, Universities, scientific institutions and media clients. IP work can be litigious or non-litigious. Disputes usually revolve around arguments of infringement or the existence of one or more intangible property rights in an invention, a literary or artistic work, a trademark or a product, or whether any IP rights exist at all. Patent litigation, in particular, can be very complex indeed, with cases running for years, usually with a lot at stake. One IP litigator told us: “The larger litigious cases tend to be patent matters as the parties are often multinational companies and the financial consequences can be enormous; often the trademark infringement or cybersquatting cases settle out of court.” Another lawyer, who works on general IP, sees how much effort is put into patent disputes: “It’s all-consuming. For example, two big drug companies going head-to-head – they need as much time as you can give them and will spend a lot of money for the best lawyers.” This lawyer doesn’t generally handle patent cases, preferring to concentrate on other IP work, especially trademarks. He thinks: “Trademark issues can be conceptually as difficult as patents. Patent cases are all about understanding the science and framing a really good expert’s report. Trademark cases often succeed and fail on the reactions of the public to a rival’s trademark (which can be unpredictable to say the least!) And you really need to know your law. Copyright issues can be horrendously complicated.” If one of his publisher clients wanted to buy the rights to a series of books, for example, he would have to review the ‘title’ or chain of ownership of copyright to these literary works, rather like reviewing the title to a piece of land.
In some respects, a general IP lawyer is a jack of all trades. The work involves a multitude of things from advising on the results of basic trademark searches to trademark opposition work (stopping a rival from registering a new mark), advising on a worldwide trademark filing strategy and drafting trademark-related agreements, such as sponsorship, endorsement and merchandising contracts. Then there’s the excitement of the commencement or defence of trademark infringement proceedings. These activities involve either working solo or with a small team of other IP specialists. On the other hand, there are times when a general IP lawyer will be called upon to work as part of a multidisciplinary team on a large corporate transaction. For some companies, a portfolio of IP rights is one of the most valuable assets they own, and even the humblest of companies will have issues to explore. The lawyer will have to advise on the IP warranties given or received by the parties to the transaction and perhaps check the title to the rights that are claimed.
By contrast with a general IP lawyer, a patent lawyer can get caught up in mammoth cross-border patent infringement cases, or find himself or herself handling a series of smaller non-litigious agreements – patent and trademark licences, research and development agreements, assignments of rights and material transfer agreements.
Skills needed
• Patent law
• A basic understanding of science
• Aptitude for technical matters and concepts
• Well-organised
• Precise drafting
• General ip
• Curiosity for all things creative, artistic
and technological
• Interest in the internet
• Up with consumer trends
Many lawyers without a science background find a career in areas of IP other than patents. On the other hand, science graduates often gravitate towards patent law because it’s an area of work in which only scientists tend to thrive. Our lawyer says: “A lot of scientists who come into law don’t like research, those days in a lab plating out bacteria – just horrendous! But with patent law, they can use their science background and effectively get a kick-start to their career. As an IP lawyer, you’re right at the front of scientific
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developments.” She says that hopefully clients can talk to her in the same technical terms as if she were someone junior in their lab.
With general IP, you’ll need to have a good sense of commercial strategy and branding issues and be innovative in the way you think. Ideas and public perceptions, images and symbols will be your stock-in-trade. Maybe in another life you’d have worked in an advertising agency.
Career options
IP knowledge is valued outside private practice. Manufacturing, pharmaceutical and research companies employ patent specialists and there are in-house legal teams at all large pharmaceutical companies. Non-patent lawyers find their way into the media world – all major publishers and television companies have in-house IP lawyers. Additionally, firms of trademark agents and patent attorneys are often keen to recruit those with legal training.
Litigation & Dispute Resolution
Unlike what is portrayed in the media, litigation is not about silver-tongued lawyers cross-examining thin-lipped corporate sharks. Most disputes never reach trial, and as a rule, clients aren’t interested in having their ‘day in court’. Every litigator know that, almost without exception, the
best approach is to reach a commercial settlement quickly and cheaply.
Unless they can be settled by correspondence, disputes are concluded in one of three ways. The first is through litigation itself – the issue and pursuit of court proceedings, which can be expensive and time-consuming. For this reason, contracts often provide for disputes between the parties to be referred to the second method, namely binding arbitrations, which are usually conducted by an expert in the subject matter where it is particularly specialised. Unlike court proceedings, arbitrations are confidential. They are particularly common in the insurance and construction industries. The third method is Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Although it can take various forms, the most common form of ADR is mediation. This involves structured negotiations between the parties, which are overseen and directed by an independent mediator. The parties retain the right to litigate if they find it impossible to reach an agreement.
Type of work
General commercial litigators handle a variety of business disputes, but most cases will be contractual, encompassing anything from a dispute over the sale of a multimillion dollar business to an argument over the meaning of a term in a tenancy agreement. Such so-called generalists might also deal with negligence claims by companies against their professional advisors. Some litigators specialise in certain industry sectors, such as construction, insurance, property or media.
Quite simply, litigation is a process. Once a case has commenced, it follows a predetermined course laid down by the rules of the court: statement of claim, disclosure of documents, witness statements, various procedural applications and, in a small number of cases, trial. In a major case, this process can take several years. The mutual disclosure of relevant documents (called discovery) can be a particularly protracted and expensive affair. Managing this process is the litigator’s primary role, and this requires not only a mastery of the rules, but also a keen appreciation of tactics and detail.
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In the largest firms, a qualified litigator may work on just a few big cases at a time, whereas the caseload will probably be more varied in smaller litigation departments. As for whether there is much opportunity to do your own advocacy, depending on the firm you’re at, the potential is definitely there. The bigger and more valuable the cases your firm takes on, the more likely you are to be a ‘cog in the machine’ in terms of researching and helping with case preparation rather than doing any advocacy yourself. However, as one lawyer pointed out: “You’ve always got the chance to build up your advocacy experience on pro bono cases and other smaller cases, and you can seize advocacy opportunities in the interlocutory stages of any case.” As a junior litigator in a firm that handles lower value cases, you’ll frequently make undisputed court applications and ask for adjournments, which will enable you to practice your advocacy skills. You’ll also be analysing an awful lot of documents, and, as a result, your research and legal analysis skills will develop quickly. The trickier task is then applying the law to the facts.
Skills needed
• Drive
• Commercial awareness
• Be a tactician
• Natural toughness
• Enjoy formulating and articulating arguments
• Must like to win
• Assimilate information quickly
• Think laterally
• Good negotiator
• Thick-skinned but still sensitive to client needs
As well as being able to conceive of ideas and arguments, you also need to communicate them to your client, counsel or, for junior lawyers, to the partner supervising you. In this respect, as our lawyer says: “The partners you’re working with in the early years are really your clients in a way – you’re building up their trust so that they’ll then let you loose on real clients.” This lawyer’s experience is in sharp contrast to the young litigator in firms that handle smaller value cases, in which the activities carried out by megafirm partners would be done by juniors, and full responsibility for a case is theirs from day one.
Good judgment, instinct and common sense are invaluable. Our lawyer adds: “By the time you’re one to two years into it, people will be depending on you. I can only read so much of the material on each case and I have to depend on the assistants in my team to read and conclude what they do in terms of case preparation and strategy formulation.” He also says: “You can be the brightest person in the world, but if you can’t handle criticism or pressure, or you muse indefinitely instead of making decisions, then you’ll never make it as a litigator.” His synopsis of litigation: “It’s about thinking it through, forming a view, making sure it’s as watertight as possible and then being prepared to stand up for it.”
Corporate clients see litigation as part of business risk; they take your advice, pay your fees and can absorb whatever happens. For private individuals (such as minority shareholders) the impact of litigation on their lives shouldn’t be underestimated – it can mean the difference between life going on and ruination. While this leads to important differences in handling the two types of client, both will be concerned with efficiency, good management and costs. It’s important to develop good relationships with your clients so that they trust you to make decisions on their behalf. As our lawyer says: “Winning litigation for clients is not just an academic exercise – these are real people.”
Career options
Every commercial firm has a litigation department and some regard it as their primary practice area. If you’re looking to be a specialist litigator then experience in the relevant industry sector will help. However, when you’re starting out, it’s probably best to focus on establishing a broad caseload. Most litigators agree that juniors should spend a few years – perhaps three to four – building up their
general skills and then move into a specialist area. You’ll
be more marketable as a litigator if you’ve accumulated general skills from an early stage, as this will ensure you’ll be less vulnerable to market trends, particularly in recessionary times.
In-house departments are not that common, although banks, insurance and construction companies sometimes employ specialist litigators. As a rule, only the very largest in-house departments need general commercial litigators.
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Property / Real Estate
One of the main reasons why students are attracted to property law is that the work involves real projects – things you can actually touch, and real people, who you deal with right from the word go. Property work includes things like developing a new cinema on George Street or converting an old factory sight into a residential complex. The deals are big, fat and tangible and, if you like, you can go and walk around in them. As one senior partner at a leading property firm says: “I don’t understand bonds and futures other than in an intellectual way. I can’t get hold of them in my hand and I wouldn’t get excited about a 90 page document dealing with them, but properties are real.”
There’s another simple reason why some lawyers have a great experience with property – you get buckets of client contact from an early stage, handle your own cases and make a real difference from the outset. It appeals to those with a sense of independence.
Type of work
Work is divided between transactional matters and one-off management advice. Our partner gave us an example of the sort of non-transactional advice clients may need: “The owner of an investment property might ring and say ‘HIH has just gone bust and we let them a large amount of office space 18 months ago. What do we do now?’”
Most work is transactional and the best-informed property lawyers are those who keep themselves apprised of what’s going on in the industry – the movers, the shakers and the deals. In the first couple of years, you’ll learn how to do “bog standard” work – sales and purchases, leases and transfers of leases, consents for the alteration or subletting of buildings. It’s important to learn the basics inside and out before stepping up into more specialised work. Even the deals at “The pointy end” strip back to the fundamentals of the basic deals you cut your teeth on.
Most property lawyers act for a wide variety of clients: homeowners, small business tenants, landlords, investors and banks. They must see the property market from all angles and must be able to champion the cause of these different parties. A varied workload is part of the appeal for many, but it does mean that the lawyer must continually adapt his or her style of communication and advice to suit the client. Only in the very largest firms will the property solicitor be pigeonholed into acting for just one type of client – usually large investors or banks. For our partner: “The most interesting clients are the developers – entrepreneurs who are coming up with the deals and the new projects.”
Arguably, the fundamental decision to be made is between being a litigator and a commercial lawyer. Having chosen the latter, becoming a property lawyer simply means that you chose a job where deals are centred on land and buildings instead of, say, company shares. The property lawyer’s job will touch upon various other disciplines – company law, finance, revenue law, trusts, liquor licensing, health and safety, Telecommunications, environmental law, agricultural law, insolvency, project finance and planning.
Skills needed
• Good on paper
• Good negotiator
• Persuasive in argument
• Precision and care
• Respect and understanding of black-letter law
• The ability to multitask
• Well-organised mind and paperwork
• Lateral thought
• Numeracy
• An interest in the property world
• Team player
• Work well alone
• Flexibility
The amount of documentation to be considered and amended requires you to be well-organised, calm and ready to embrace detail. Successful property lawyers combine the capacity for new ideas and clever strategy with a willingness to sit down and turn the ideas, word by word, into watertight agreements. Negotiation skills are key. In addition to being able to argue a point well, you’ve got to know when to push, when to dig your heels in and when to give in. In this respect, the pickiest lawyers do not make the best practitioners. Skills will come (in time) from practice, common sense and a good knowledge of what the property market will allow you to get away with. It’s also your job to uncover everything there is to know about a property so tenacity is important.
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Your dealings with clients, other lawyers and property professionals will be both on the phone and in meetings. You’ll need to express yourself clearly and confidently. Generally, both sides have the same goal and so the real trick is to get the best deal for your client within the time frame that they set for you. The most successful and satisfied property lawyers actually get on very well with their opposite numbers. Our partner told us: “It makes all the difference in a transaction...Everyone comes to the party at the end of a deal.”
At times in the largest firms, a young lawyer might be a part of the team working on one (albeit big) project. More typically, a property lawyer will have scores of different cases on the go at any one time, so you have to be pretty adept at juggling them all. You learn early on how to prioritise tasks.
Career options
Just as the fortunes of the property market have been cyclical, the fortunes of property lawyers rise and fall accordingly. No longer just a support for more glamorous and bigger-billing departments, deals are more sophisticated in their structuring than ever before.
Some in-house lawyers perform much the same function as those in private practice, while fund managers often have specialist property lawyers handling the fund’s property deals in tandem with solicitors in private practice. Public sector jobs regularly crop up, such as at the NSW department of lands or in a local authority.
Tax
“Nothing pleases finance directors more than saving some tax. If you give advice that saves your clients tax in the commercial world, then they’re going to be very happy people.” These words from a tax practitioner neatly summarise the immense and enduring value of corporate tax lawyers. Their primary role is to advise as to the most tax-efficient means of structuring and running business. Tax work is highly client-focused – a good deal of the work is for repeat clients who invariably want quick and commercial aNSWers to complex questions. If you’re looking to avoid dealing with people by sequestering yourself away in a tiny office with dusty statute books and dodgy lighting, don’t become a tax lawyer.
Type of work
The voluminous and ever evolving nature of tax law requires constant attention to black letter law, but it’s not the case that you’ll be forever poring over the minutiae while your colleagues in sexier areas get to close deals and pop champagne corks. There is a wide variety of tax work on offer – transactional, litigious and general advisory – not to mention an increasingly international aspect to the transactional work in particular, where the relevant laws of a number of jurisdictions need to be considered. Tax is a crucial component of every major deal undertaken by commercial firms. Whether the matter is corporate, finance or property-related, you can be sure that tax lawyers will be among the key advisors.
One lawyer told us: “It takes a long time for young lawyers to build up the experience necessary to advise in a wide range of situations. People shouldn’t think that they’ll become an expert in less than four to five years.” There’s a huge quantity of law relevant to the area and, when giving advice, practitioners need to take into account not only tax legislation and cases, but also other areas of law that might be relevant.
Tax law evolves at a far greater rate than the majority of other practice areas so you’ll need to be constantly on the lookout for change. Our lawyer says: “The thing about tax is that no matter how qualified or senior you are, you will never know everything because it’s changing all the time – it doesn’t stand still.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking that most of a tax lawyer’s work involves dealing with numbers and doing mathematical calculations. But you’d be wrong. One partner says: “Tax lawyers don’t do a lot of the boring stuff; we don’t do compliance work, we don’t file returns, we don’t do due diligence or computations.” So what does a typical day
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involve? Researching law, advising on deals, and advising on how to structure business activities. Our lawyer says: “Tax law has the greatest intellectual challenge as a junior lawyer simply because it’s so difficult to get your head around as an area of law. Secondly, tax lawyers are dealing with law all the day, not working out the logistics of getting a deal done or shuffling bits of paper.”
As far as the work/life balance goes, our lawyer thinks that “It’s much better than in a lot of other departments. We work hard but we usually manage to do it within the normal working hours. If you like burning the midnight oil and having lots of 4am corporate completions, then tax law may not be for you.” Why are the hours so reasonable? It’s mainly the nature of the work itself that allows it to be completed within normal working hours, which links in nicely with the fact that “Tax lawyers are so in demand that firms generally treat them well.” Another bonus of the job, according to our lawyer, is the fact that you deal with and get to know lawyers from right around the firm on a day-to-day basis. “You get to work on the corporate deals, the property deals and the banking deals.”
Skills needed
• Good academics
• Analytical mind
• Thinking outside the box
• Willing to challenge and test
• Clear communication
• Commerciality
• Technical excellence
• Great interpretation of black letter law
One of the most important things you must do as a
tax lawyer is to get complex messages across to your clients in a concise and understandable manner. By and large, your clients will not be tax experts and they will not want a lengthy academic discussion as to tax theory. What they will want is to know the commercial effect of the relevant legislation on their business and they will want to know it quickly.
Tax lawyers have to be commercially minded and able to communicate really complex ideas to non-experts. But as our lawyer states: “Tax law is likely to appeal to lawyers who like law – reading statutes and cases.” The studious or academic side does need to be there, but remember, it’s just part of the picture. Our lawyer goes on to say: “One of the most valuable qualities a tax lawyer can have is creativity and innovation; the ability to think outside the box, to think about a set of facts from all angles and save some tax.”
Career options
Many of the most successful tax solicitors become barristers, and this part of the bar is known for its
super-high earnings.
As for the alternatives to private practice, in a nutshell, your options are pretty clear. You can work in-house in the tax department of a large corporate or bank, or you can work for the government at the ato. Our lawyer makes the point that “If you go in-house at a corporate or bank, you only have the one client, which if you’re lucky will give you an array of matters to deal with. If you work for the government, you get a fantastic range of matters because the government deals with all types of tax issues.” Although the working pressures are less in the public sector, unfortunately so are the financial rewards. As our lawyer observes: “The flow tends to be the other way – people usually join a commercial law firm from the ato and get paid much more after getting valuable knowledge and practical experience of tax law in the civil service.”
Some solicitors move to accountancy firms in a tax consultancy role (as distinct from working for the legal arm of an accountancy firm). While “It’s very similar to working for law firms”, according to some there are certain “Cultural differences” which can make for a rather bumpy adjustment to the new job.
Overall, the skills and knowledge gained through working in private practice are portable at all levels of qualification. There’s certainly no shortage of positions in private practice for those who want them, provided they’re “Made of the right stuff.” After just a few years of bedding down in the area, junior tax lawyers become a very marketable commodity. Our lawyer states: “Firms are always keen to have a decent tax lawyer, and this is reflected in the salaries.” There’s just one draw back – the public image.
As one of our tax lawyers said: “When I meet a girl at a
party and I tell her what I do, it tends to kill conversation stone dead!”
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Technology, Media & Telecommunications
Technology, media and Telecommunications (TMT)
is an ever-changing practice area, and just as the technology industry evolves with rapidity, so must the lawyers servicing it.
The head of the technology group at one law firm told us: “It’s an area of law where you have to be a bit more nimble than others. You have to keep reinventing yourself.” This partner started out in computer law in the late 80s, and by 1996, e-commerce had arrived. In the mid-90s, multimedia came and went. When digital tv hit, he and his colleagues had to get up to speed on that. When the dot.com bubble burst, they had to adjust to the fact that the lucrative start-up market was disappearing.
So what kind of clients do TMT lawyers work for?
• It and telecoms suppliers and their customers;
• Huge multinationals;
• Small entrepreneurs or start-ups
• Local and central government and charities;
• Web-based businesses, software developers,
hardware suppliers and maintainers, disaster
recovery suppliers;
• 23-Year-olds winning and losing fortunes from their
dad’s garages!
The concept of ‘convergence’ keeps TMT lawyers on their toes these days. Telecommunications, tv and the internet are becoming so interrelated and interchangeable that lawyers in the sector must learn to master each of these media. As our partner told us: “It’s all going to come together; you’ll be watching tv on your phone and sending email from your tv. It will change the way we all work.”
Type of work
It and internet-based work involves a lot of commercial contract drafting, for example, terms and conditions for a website, software development agreements, computer games licences or outsourcing (where outside it specialists are brought in to set up and run a company’s computer systems). Clients will seek advice on issues such as data protection compliance or cyber-squatting (domain name disputes). Lawyers are also drawn into a support role, working with their corporate colleagues on M&A transactions. Competition law rears its head, for example, where large it suppliers are accused of abusing a dominant position in the market place.
Some matters may even lead to litigation and, at this stage, non-litigious TMT lawyers will enlist the help of specialist TMT litigators. These lawyers regularly handle disputes over contracts to provide it services (hardware / software / maintenance / disaster recovery etc.). If a piece of software simply doesn’t do what the customer thought it would, their primary role is to get to the point where the software will work. In these circumstances, lawyers need to handle matters in a way that doesn’t ruin the relationship between the parties. Our partner says: “Our clients look for alternative to traditional litigation; for many it’s all about getting the next deal moving.” Then there are disputes between competitors, perhaps over Intellectual Property in software or the name or design of a website. Even without a customer-supplier relationship to protect, mediation, expert determination and other less formal methods of Dispute Resolution are very popular with TMT clients. TMT lawyers are likely to spend less time in court than ordinary commercial litigators, and more time advising clients on strategies for negotiating settlements to disputes. Major it suppliers are often keen to avoid the publicity of litigation at a time when poor sector performance is being reported in the press. However, not all cases are resolved amicably. Big multi-million dollar disputes do reach the high court and TMT litigators may be called upon to rush to court on very short notice to apply for emergency injunctions (eg to prevent ongoing breach of copyright in a client’s software).
Lawyers acting for telecoms clients are additionally called upon to give advice on the regulatory regimes which govern the sector and are designed to protect the interests of consumers. There’s a heavy transactional side to telecoms law and any observer will have noted the consolidation in the industry in the last couple of years.
Around 80% of the typical TMT lawyers work is transactional in nature, whether it be a large M&A deal or a smaller commercial contract. Our partner says: “We are becoming more like corporate lawyers in large outsourcing deals; we co-ordinate other parts of the firm – employment, property, banking, tax etc. It lawyers today are what corporate lawyers were ten years ago.”
The reality is that as a TMT lawyer you exist to service the many needs of your client sector. New laws and cases appear and your job is to navigate a path through these as well as being a good all-round commercial advisor. Furthermore, TMT lawyers normally get the chance to go on secondments to clients.
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Skills needed
• General grounding in corporate and contract law
• Commercial
• Ability to be a deal-maker
• Understand ‘hard’ regulatory matters
• Sensitive to the needs of ‘creatives’
• Keep up to speed with new technology
• Comfortable with technical jargon
• Industry knowledge
• Gut feel for the issues
• Be thrilled by change
• Innovative
• Knowledge of competition law and copyright matters
• A sensible approach to risk
Are you always the first of your friends to buy gadgets? Our partner confesses to this – he’s fascinated by technology. Another lawyer says: “I am quite a gadget person. Most people here do like gadgets.” Having a background in the technology sector will help, but it is by no means essential. If this all sounds rather blokey, rest assured that as many women go into the area as men.
Commercial draftsmanship is a core skill. Commonly, there are no precedents for what you’re trying to achieve, so you must not be put off by a blank piece of paper. You have to be innovative and come up with some ‘outside the box’ thinking. Our partner says: “Sometimes we need to advise our clients that there is no point in spending $10K on the perfect legal case, when a cheaper route is likely to achieve the right result.” Little in this area of law is traditional. Innovative technology clients call for innovative legal advisors.
Before you start your training you can help yourself enormously by keeping up with developments in technology. If you’re already up to speed with the movers and shakers in the sector and how the market has shifted, then when you start your training you can spend more time developing legal skills and less time grasping the basics of the sector.
Career options
As it’s still seen as a sexy area of law, it’s quite competitive at the junior end. It’s not been the best of markets since the technology slump, but the lawyers we spoke to were adamant that if you have a passion for the sector then you should pursue your dream job. Combining your interests with your legal training is the route to job satisfaction. Teams within law firms tend to be quite stable, but some lawyers do move in-house and often find their role becomes wider ranging than in private practice. These jobs are almost always going to be on the non-litigious side.
(Source: Adapted from Chambers and