Profiles in Awesomeness

Week 2, Semester 2

By Ian Khor

This article is a follow up on the one I penned a couple of months ago. In that article (which you should read by the way because it’s like the best thing on De Min), there was an encouragement for all those who failed a subject last year and are thinking twice about whether they should continue the Juris Doctor program, or even whether they could become a lawyer at all.

Here, I am going to point out that your Juris Doctor qualification will provide you with even more opportunities down the dusty, well-trodden ‘Lawyer’ path. Below are a few examples of Melbourne Law School alumni who did not go down the traditional career route but jumped down the rabbit hole with Alice instead.

1. Jack Hoi
   

Jack Hoi graduated from Melbourne Law School in the year 2000, when it still offered a Bachelor of Laws. His post-MLS career pathway has been nothing short of exciting. He never practiced law, and instead , went to work in both Melbourne and New York for Boston Consulting Group, one of the largest consulting firms in the world.
At the end of his time with, he joined SEEK (you know, the one site where we all desperately apply for every job entitled ‘Paralegal Wanted’?) as their Head of Strategy. He oversaw the growth of the company into the largest job boards in Australia today. Currently, he is balancing his job at SEEK with his new start-up, Onploy, which is a marketplace that helps connect top companies with software engineering talent.
He has said on numerous occasions that his legal education jump-started his career in consulting, and enabled him to own a business .

1. Grace Wong
   

A 2012 Melbourne Law School graduate, Grace Wong was a lawyer with Mahons for less than 2 years before deciding that she had had enough. In 2014, she co-founded Liven, which started as a dining rewards app which allowed a user to exchange ‘Liven Credit’ for discounts at selected restaurants. So far, the app has raised $11.5 million in traditional capital and processed around $5 million in bill payments. They have also launched their own cryptocurrency just for food called ‘LivenCoins’, which includes a pre-sale for an initial coin offering with a goal of $65 million to power their cryptocurrency dream.
During the start-up panel the law school hosted earlier last year, Grace repeatedly stressed the importance of her legal education, which helped open doors. She recounted a story about a restaurant owner, who was sceptical about Grace’s app and refused to jump on board. However, after learning that she had a legal background, she was surprised to find the restaurant owner doing a 360, welcoming her with open arms and swiftly agreeing to be a part of the platform.

1. Max Paterson
   

Max graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Law from the University of Melbourne in 2011. He practiced as a lawyer for 4 years before starting Settify with fellow alumni Athol Birtley. Settify provides online paralegal software to family law firms, compiling the client’s initial instructions into an intelligent brief for their lawyers by employing a fluid, easy-on-the-eye user interface coupled with simple questions that help the ordinary person understand legal jargon.
Since launching, Settify has helped over 2000 clients settle their family law disputes.

Both believe that having a law degree does not necessarily require graduates to become lawyers. There are so many different ways to use a law degree in order to pursue your dreams, includings starting your own business. I hope that, by providing these examples, this would decrease the pressure and worry faced by second and third year law school students, for whom clerkships and competition for graduate positions are on the horizon. Having witnessed the success of these amazing people firsthand, I can honestly say that they do not regret going down the law path and, perhaps, are currently facing a reward through chasing their own dreams, instead of the dreams of others.
I encourage all of us to continue forward on this law journey, whether you’ve failed or not, with the realisation that, even if you don’t get to become a lawyer, at least you’ll get to become someone even better.