6.45 AM
I wake up at 6.45 am (which I consider early), eat breakfast, pack lunch and head to the gym for a morning workout. I like to exercise in the morning to have a satisfying start to the day.
I shower and change at the end-of-trip facilities at the office, and I’m ready to get into my work day.
8.30 AM
Up on level 14, where I sit in my first graduate rotation in TMT, I say hello to those of my colleagues that have already arrived, check my Outlook inbox to see what the day has in store.
9.00 AM
My first task today is to draft part of an advice to a client who is entering into a commercially important joint venture. This advice is a collaboration with several different members of the TMT team, and it’s very important to consider the key legal risks facing a client, and provide advice that is easy to understand and consistent with their commercial interests. In this case, the advice focuses on the corporate structure of the joint venture and regulatory prerequisites to establishment.
11.00 AM
I attend a meeting with the TMT partner in which we run through some slides I created for a client legal education presentation.
I have found assisting with business development as a very helpful way to understand the key legal concerns of major clients, while also learning more about relevant areas of the law.
12.00 PM
It’s lunchtime!
I enjoy getting out of the office for lunch, so I either head up to the balcony on level 18 to enjoy the harbour views, or to the nearby Botanic Gardens to bask in the sunshine.
Today I have my lunch with some of the other grads. I really enjoy the collegial spirit among the graduates at Corrs, which is great for asking questions of people going through similar experiences and just having work friends to talk to at lunch.
1.00 PM
After lunch, I attend a pro bono client call as part of the firm’s Homeless Persons’ Legal Service, which assists the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. The Homeless Persons’ Legal Service is a Corrs initiative that helps clients who are facing homelessness and are otherwise unable to obtain legal advice.
As this is the first call with the client, the focus is on ascertaining the facts of the client’s matter and determining if we are able to assist. I join a fellow grad and a senior associate on the call to help the client through the process and discuss next steps. I write up notes of the call and circulate it to the team.
2.00 PM
My next task is to review responses to a tender put out by a government client.
Each of the responding companies has marked up the client’s standard form contracts with their changes, and our job is to summarise the most important changes for the client.
This is a particularly interesting task because it provides insight into how different companies take various creative approaches to addressing the same contractual risks.
3.30 PM
My final task for the day is to assist the Competition team with amending a client’s contractual terms to ensure that they fall within the appropriate part of the competition law.
Although I am currently in the TMT team, at Corrs many of the teams work collaboratively to provide comprehensive legal solutions for clients. For example, in TMT we do a lot of work with Competition who sit on the other side of level 14.
This work is very engaging because it involves considering the effect of the contractual obligations in the commercial and legal context, and how they might impact the market in which our client operates.
5.30 PM
With the competition advice sent off, I finalise my time entries and create a to-do list of tasks for the next day.
Finally, I check with my team that nothing else needs to be done that day, and knock off for the evening.
6.15 PM
My working day is over and it’s time to head home!
Fortunately the office is in a great location to get the direct train line home. I’m having dinner and watching TV before I know it, resting up for another big day tomorrow.