Industry sign banking georgia document fast
[Music] hi everyone welcome back to another episode of the young professionals podcast uh serge and luke here again sarge who are we speaking with today luke today we're speaking with georgia whiteside georgia is an associate lawyer at johnson wynton winter and slattery working predominantly in the tax and corporate team after graduating from deakin with an article degree at the start of 2017 georgia completed the graduate program at jws after which she took a 12-month leave of absence to complete an associate ship with justice steward in the federal quarter of australia georgia then returned to jws where she went on to complete a 10-month secondment to cub to work on the takeover by sahih georgia has been involved in nearly all aspects of the legal landscape so it is great to speak with her today georgia welcome to the show thanks very much thanks for having me on well thanks thanks for being here we'll jump straight into it what does an associate or what does a lawyer do at a law firm and what is your what does your day-to-day look like um so i'm working in the tax team at my law firm um most of the time although i do do some work in the other teams but at the moment i'm working on a big business audit so i'm a first second year lawyer so um at the moment we've got a big document review going on so i've got six junior lawyers reviewing documents for me um and then i'm doing second level review of those documents and then other tasks we're always doing lots of continued professional development so working on presentations and contributing to textbooks and things like that um and otherwise just dealing with lots of little matters as they come up so there's always lots of emails and meetings and helping to draft legal documents and we're working in a tax team what is that what does that look like what what are the types of issues that you might come across yeah i know it sounds really boring um it's like such a easy way to end a conversation at a party no one wants to talk about tax law but um i really enjoy it so tax teams are usually split into the front end work so transactions and advisory um and the tax team will advise on um mergers and acquisitions and other corporate transactions and structures um sometimes they'll just have a small involvement and they'll have a look over an agreement and make sure it looks okay from a tax perspective because there are some tricky things with tax and you want some greater expertise and then on the dispute side um well my firm does work for big multinationals that the tax the tax office um wants to make sure that they're doing the right thing and paying their fair share so often um large multinationals will receive um letters from the ato asking more about their affairs and they'll ask for documents and information and then that can be quite a um long and time-consuming process in dealing with the ato as they audit your affairs and maybe a bit of a silly question what's the source of all these different rules that uh our tax professional needs to be across we've got lots of big textbooks of legislation um because there are lots of different acts that um cover tax um so there's the there's the federal taxes the income tax legislation um that i prefer to deal with um there's there's two acts which we use for that um they actually there's the it's quite complicated legislation and they um they tried to rewrite it they first wrote it in 1936 and then they tried to simplify the tax laws in 1997 but they didn't quite get to cover everything and it didn't quite work too well for them so now we've got two income tax acts um and then we also deal with indirect taxes as well which is like stamp duty and gst um so then there's a whole whole other sets of laws to deal with those topics george for the people that aren't in uh sorry studying law or looking to get into the legal injury can you just touch on what what an act is and what um legislation is and why that's important in terms of how you operate as a lawyer and all of these compliance issues that the companies are coming to you is yeah sure um so acts are um the laws passed by parliament um so there's federal federal laws which come from the federal parliament um and they gather govern federal things and they set out the rules for um uh your tax affairs as well as everything else in different areas of law um and then there's also um the rules created by state state parliaments that deal with state issues and it's basically the rule book that people have to play by yeah depending on what what you're doing and what you're interested in what you're interested in yeah exactly and and um if that the the law is really the legislation's really just the starting point um and then that gets built on by um case law so law made from courts and judges um and then there's also lots of other extrinsic material that we look at as well as regulations and other things to supplement so the rule book is where you start with the legislation and then there's lots that piles on top of that to help you understand um what parliament is intending to achieve yeah and i think that that extrinsic information that you're talking about in terms of um you obviously deal with the ato or the tax office a lot of the time and they'll come out with with decisions that or or guidance notes and things like that um that people can can look to so for people starting out at the law school or in their first year of law or second year of law like there's you might find the legislation a bit confusing but there's a whole other world of stuff out there once you get into once you get into practice um definitely i think what you said in terms of it can it can be a conversation stopper a party but what you talk about in terms of tax law a question that i always get in terms like uh what you do day-to-day is it like is it like suits um do you do is that what you do all day so why don't you take us through um you know what say a contract review is and i know that that's something that a lot of corporate lawyers are involved in a lot of the time um what is the the detail of the of the deals that you're working on um and what are you actually doing um for the client yeah so um when i'm looking at laws for the corporate team or from a corporate perspective um i'll basically be looking at the whole the whole document and making sure that it's logical and it makes sense but then also looking for any red flags or just things often they're things that you might not be able to change but they're just going to be things that you want to advise the client about so you really want the client to be able to understand the risk profile of the agreement that they're entering into so even if there's things you can't change it's important to highlight what's going to happen if something goes wrong under the agreement um and then usually there'll be some sticking points for the client and things that you'll have to change um so yeah looking at all of that from a corporate perspective and then tax as well there can be some really um expensive issues down the track if you haven't worked out um how the two parties or which whoever's party to the agreement are going to deal with um their liability under the agreement in respects of tax issues and also in respect of tax issues that might um arise further down the track that you can't foresee at the time of entering into the agreement [Music] and how do you stay across all of these different uh changing laws and all the different guidance that's published by the ato um so i think that no one in the team expects me to know everything as a junior lawyer and i think that's the case for most firms and most junior lawyers so usually you've got some time to look into things when you're working on a new matter making sure you're across the latest law on that but also we do do at my in my team we have um fortnightly training where we'll look at a new tax case and um someone will present on that so that's a good way to stay across developments as well as just you know my email subscriptions that i sign up to giving me notifications of taxpayer alerts and things like that and also just talking to people like talking to people in the team talking to the people in the industry outside of my law firm and just staying across the key cases as well like for example um last week there was a big transfer pricing um decision being held in the full court being heard in the full court of the federal court so i just tuned into that um in the background while i was working for four days um so and that's another um good thing especially it's very easy with covet at the moment so court cases are all open to the public and with covert because they're hearing them online at the moment anyone from the public can tune in to most cases at any time so you can just they publish the um dial in details online and you can tune in to just have a listen to what's happening in these court cases which can also be a good way to just understand how cases work in general i think that's a good point even for um you know uni students or anyone even studying legal studies at high school i know people were saying you know try and get along to a court case if you can during uni and it was always a bit of a pain to try and get there but you know it's never been more accessible than it is today so certainly try and log on there um yeah george i want to try and touch on and there's you've got a really colorful history in terms of touching on every aspect of the legal industry basically so far um i think a a point of interest for a lot of people listening that might be studying law is obviously the clerkship process and how you go through say clerkships and then grad roles and and get into into a junior position at a firm do you want to step through that process and what at what stage you started to think about that and kind of what steps you took to prepare for it yeah sure um so i was from the start of my degree i was always thinking about um making connections to make it easier to get a job when i finished my degree um because i wasn't always the best at putting all my eggs in the uni basket and focusing just on um grades so i tried to take a um to always be thinking from the start about ways i could learn more about how to get into the industry um so at the end of my first year of my degree i did some legal work at a big asix company um just for eight weeks and then i think in my second year of university i started working for two barristers in the city as an assistant um so that was a really good way to just um find out what's going on in the legal industry get to know some people and find out more about how it all works um so i was there for 18 months and then i applied for clerkships in the usual way just looking at the different firms and what they offer online and going through that application process i didn't really know much about it so i relied a lot on the websites that post the lists of all the different clerkships um and how they work how the applications work um and then i clarked at three law firms and i ended up staying at thompson gear for 10 months after my clerkship in the banking team um and then i swapped over to my current firm once offers the ideas came out nice and i think you know a lot of us are kind of um prone to underselling ourselves and i think you've done it just there like landing three clerkships um in quite a competitive environment which is kind of the legal industry trying to get into it um is no mean feat do you want to talk about the the process in terms of the cover letters and getting in touch with people and understanding how important it is to figure out what different firms are after and what to kind of appeal to in that process and even talk to say the interview process and what that was like and how you kind of prepared for that yeah definitely um and i think um it can be really difficult um and you never know what different law firms are looking for so part of it is definitely a numbers game um i think it's good to just apply to a broad range of law firms because you might think i'm not good enough to get into this top law firm but you might end up getting an interview there and not getting an interview at one that you thought would be easier to get i don't really think that you can work out what jobs are going to be easier to get compared to others so i think it's good to just apply for lots of firms apply for a really broad range and then try and showcase whatever you can in your resume cover letter but i always like to keep my cover letter um pretty short because i always think that i try and keep it to like um around a page because i always think that there will be lots of applicants and lots of reading for hr to do and then i think i thought the clarkship process seemed really rigid when i was first introduced to it but then having worked in law firms and things and i've started to see that there's lots of you know different side entrances and different ways to go about these things so i don't think you should think that you know if you miss out on um a clerkship that there's no way then to get that legal experience at a law firm so you should always just try and be keeping your ear out for other ways to get some experience and um yeah you don't have to go through the same same way that everyone else does just on that on that cover cover a little point and keeping it nice and short i think the coverlet is also a really good way to demonstrate to your employer that you can write and a big part of being a lawyer is being able to write and communicate uh concisely and succinctly so i think that's that's a great opportunity um to showcase yourself when applying for the clerkships yeah yeah maybe a cover letter is more important in the legal industry um compared to some other ones and you can really focus on getting the tone right um so that they can kind of get a feel for who you are um from your riding georgia you also have done your you completed your association with justice stewart in the federal court of australia how did you go about securing that and what what types of things were you doing um i came about with a bit of luck but i think you have more luck the more you've kind of gone out and gotten different work experiences because i found out about that job because i had worked for those barristers um and they were on the same floor of chambers as justice stewart and what's what's chambers oh sorry so um barristers are running their own business so barristers being um the people who appear in court so a law firm often will hire a barrister to talk um on behalf of their client um in court so each barrister is running their own business and um they will rent out a room to run that business from and um those rooms are called chambers and i have i got in trouble a lot when i was starting out um in chambers for calling them offices the barristers definitely didn't like it if i ever called in an office i had to call them rooms in chambers um and then they used the same word for the rooms that the judges occupy in courts so you'll have chambers where barristers rent out rooms and then each court has chambers where the judges have rooms yeah um yes so back to your question about um the associate ship um so i i knew justice steward from working in chambers because you get to know a lot of barristers when you're when you're in there um and then he was appointed to the federal court um which was another stroke of luck because often they plan their associates quite far in advance but obviously you can't plan your associate when you don't even know that you're going to be in the court um so he just was appointed and he was looking for his first associate and his one of his previous assistants reached out to me and asked if i'd like to apply um and so i applied that way um which which was great because i probably wouldn't have thought to have done an associate ship otherwise so what what sorts of things were you doing with with justice stewart while you were an associate it was it was such a fun year um and so it was just you know because it was his first year in the court he was kind of trying to work out how it all worked and i was trying to work out how it all worked unfortunately he had a
um assistant as well who'd been at the court for a long time so she could kind of show us the ropes um but so i was uh working with him in chambers and then so he'll sit in his room in chambers for most of the day and then when he's um got a court case on he'll go down to court and i'll go ahead of him and set up his desk and his computer and things and um then i'll take the appearances from the barristers who are appearing so i'll get their names and i'll write them down for him um and then when court's ready to commence i would knock knock the door and everyone stands up and we'd walk in and i'd call the matter for hearing um and then during the hearing actually often often was working on other things because that was i took up a lot of my time and i needed to stay on top of my work so in terms of what work i did for him um apart from setting up court it was a lot of research um particularly as it was his first year and he was still he was he was a tax barrister but then going into court he was hearing matters from all sorts of practice areas so he had to um relearn lots of different areas of law and so i would help him do research on legal issues that were rising in the cases in his docket and then a big part of the job of an associate is also helping with judgments and especially proof proofreading judgments and making sure that everything's correct before um the judgement gets handed down on that george obviously people that are at law school we'll be used to reading judgments and know what they are but um do you want to just run through what i guess uh and this is super basic but for people who aren't say at law school they probably wouldn't know what is case law and how are those judgments that you're proofing for your judge um how are they used in practice and why they're important yeah definitely so um so when we would hear matters um in front of us uh the first point would be the legislation which we've which we discussed earlier so we'd be looking at the law um but the law uh doesn't show you how um the rules would apply to all different circumstances so in order to fill those gaps you have to look at how the law has been interpreted by courts in similar cases have come before so that's called precedent and some precedent you have to follow it's called binding precedent whereas other precedent you just um look at as an example of how people have thought about these issues and that um is called persuasive precedent so um we'd start with the law and then the different parties would also show us similar cases or cases that talk about the types of issues that we were that tell us how to interpret the law and if there was binding precedent we'd have to follow it the judge has to follow it and um and then he so you hear the case from both parties and then you go away and have a think about it usually you sometimes they deliver the judgment on the spot but usually you'll go away and have a think about it and then you write down the reasons for why you've come to the decision that you've come to so so the the cases are um setting out the reasoning as to um what the law means and how it applies in the to these facts and circumstances so that we can understand yeah what what drives whether something's binding and whether something's persuasive um so the courts sit in a hierarchy um and that means that the courts at the top of the hierarchy um have the most uh their their cases are binding on the courts beneath them so um the courts so then that helps us to have some certainty um and in the law so we can look at what's happened um in the courts above and we have to follow that whereas um if it's happened in a court that's lower in the hierarchy um the higher courts have the power to deviate from that and i think an important point to note is say you're working for a judge you would have had obviously direct exposure to this but i think people that aren't in the industry might think oh you know judges just spend all their time thinking and and taking all of their time but an important point is that you know when they make a decision then it becomes precedent so they they need to make sure that what they're what they're deciding is kind of based on um some decent logic so can you talk to how your judge as a particularly as a first year judge was that a lot of responsibility that he was like oh i really need to get this right obviously um and how did he kind of lean on you to help him with that yeah definitely um he really liked to be prepared and i felt that some of the more experienced judges um had the confidence to show up to a hearing and um feel confident that they understand understood the issues and what the current law was on those points whereas um justice stewart liked to come very prepared being a baby judge as he called himself um so he would always so before the hearing starts the parties will have filed um some legal documents that help us to understand what the case is going to be about and so we would read those documents before going into court um and then try and think of what understand what the legal issues were and then go and um do some research into the cases on the on those points um because like you said um the judgment forms precedent but also you want to make sure that you haven't missed um any cases that um are relevant on the topic because otherwise yeah you'll have got the answer wrong and with that i would imagine that um obviously legal research is quite an important part of your role is there particular strategies i guess that people are studying law at the moment now could be practicing with their assignments and by that i mean you know how to research legal databases and stuff like that um that they can use in even in clerkships that could to kind of i guess show their their skills there or moving into grad roles or work down the track yeah um legal research has been a big part of all the different jobs that i've had in the legal industry um and i think it's very useful to be across all the different databases that you have access to as a uni student you probably have access to more databases as a uni student than you will in a lot of jobs um but i think that different databases are good for different tasks and for different reasons and also some people that you work for will prefer certain databases over other ones so i think it's good if you use all the different databases rather than just having your favorite one because as well sometimes you might find a case on one database that you couldn't find on another one they do have different subscriptions and things like that so i think it's good to be across all the databases um and then i also found it useful to just make a note of how i was going with my research as i was going so even if you don't find something useful you should make a note of um the searches that you've done so that you can um you can tell people i've done this search and i didn't find anything or i've looked at this and looked at that and you can keep track of where you've looked so that you don't end up going back to the same places i think that's fantastic advice and i think it's it's very true that uh what you say in terms of noting noting what you what you've looked at and where you've looked because um i've definitely had the experience of work before where someone someone's asked you to go and find something and you might spend three hours looking and find absolutely nothing and you're thinking oh well i've just spent three hours of my time i haven't found anything but it's like well i haven't found anything but these are all the places i have look so it also goes to just like justifying what you've been doing yeah definitely and and that does happen a lot often times you don't know if there's going to be an answer to the question that you're um looking into and being able to then at least have some confidence that there might not be something on that topic and you'll be able to have be able to be more confident if you've um recorded everywhere that you've looked i just want to take two minutes to talk like directly to a first or second year law student now because i wish someone kind of sat me down and told me this then particularly when you're getting ready for assignments and things like that if you're sitting there trying to write um you know an essay on a particular topic go into all of the databases and dedicate a day to learning how these work because there's stuff called commentary and explanations on why judges have made certain decisions or why legislation has been written in a certain way and if your task is literally to you know discuss insert the topic and find different reasons for and against that if you can spend a day in a database and finding all of this commentary and all of this um i guess discussion around those points that really smart people have been talking about for years it's all there and you can kind of write your own essays that way instead of kind of um sifting through large textbooks and trying to find the right answer um that's something i really didn't learn and it's a bit embarrassing to say until probably fourth or fifth year of uni that commentary existed so that that would be my one time typical advice there yeah definitely and you don't have to start there i still often usually start with a google search just so that i i understand the topic i mean um as we all know um laura is just such a huge um there's so so many different laws out there and um no one expects you to know everything about all of them so i usually like to start with a google search so i can understand the jargon and get a basic understanding of what the topic is and from there i'll then move into the legal databases just to jump back a few steps george you studied a bachelor of arts and bachelor of law at deakin what drove you to to study law and arts and was law always something that was on your radar no it wasn't always on my radar um i think the reason i studied arts law was because um well in school it's just so hard to understand what what's involved in different jobs um and what different jobs are even out there um so i wanted to keep it broad um which is where the arts comes in um as well and um so i wanted to do something broad but then i also wanted to do a degree that had some practical use um and some practical skills and something that you could um apply to real jobs and that was where the law came in and i always i always thought you don't need to end up being a lawyer if you've got a law degree um it can also be a useful degree to have in um different commercial jobs um or outside the commercial sphere as well um but then i just ended up really enjoying the legal side of my um uni degrees so that's why i ended up in law and what was it particularly that you really enjoyed about studying law and learning a little bit more about the industry yeah so i guess i probably assumed that i would have preferred the art side but then once i got into it i think i liked the problem-solving side of law and i liked the structure to it and i liked that you could learn something and then apply it to a problem and it had this practical application um some of the art subjects i did everything seemed a bit theoretical and i liked being able to learn the different steps of how something worked and then um learn how to apply that to different sets of facts and circumstances yeah i think i feel the same way about laura and it's something that i really like about it and i would really urge anyone that is kind of um enjoying the areas of say debate or um problem solving where there's not really a clear answer at school to to consider going into law because everything that we write and georgie you obviously had this similar experience it you know if you're giving an email of advice it's like you know we consider this to be the answer it's not this is black and white the answer um so it's really taking everything at your disposal and really applying um as you say problem-solving um skills that you've kind of built up to say hey this is my argument as to why this i think that this is correct um you can kind of take that or leave it but um no i think i think it's a really fun fun place to be in um so yeah that's my two cents on on that but jump forward a little bit um georgia so you're back at jws now you've kind of completed your grad program um and now you get the really cool opportunity to go on a secondment um secondment for one bit to carlton united breweries or cub which is one of the probably bigger big organizations in australia do you want to walk through probably what a surcondiment is and how those opportunities arise and then the the massive transaction that you're working on while you were there yeah yeah um carlton united breweries was a really fun place to work um so they're a client of my firm and i'd been working on a corporate matter um for them um it was actually a transaction that didn't end up happening um but through that i had got to meet the client um and got to know the client so then um they ended up being purchased by sahih um and so once they had entered into the sale and purchase agreement they will they realized that they were gonna have a lot of work to do um in getting that deal to completion so they wanted an extra resource um so when a company wants um some extra resource an extra resource within the company but they don't want to hire a new person they'll often get a second in for a short period of time to help with the extra work and so that's what happened in this case carlton united breweries asked jws if they had someone that could help out with this project um and so because i had worked for that client um i i did this to comment um so it was three days a week and i was working in their offices um three days a week so essentially being like it was like being an employee being part of their legal team three days a week um while still being employed by my law firm and who who are you working with out there um so i was working with the legal team um so i was working for the gc um she was awesome is awesome um and then they have quite a small legal team um so i got to sit with them and work with all of them and then they'll often use all different law firms to help them with different their different legal issues yeah so comments are a really good way for for law firms and i i assume other professional services firms to get someone kind of in the inner workings of their client and really understand them well and i guess come back and then you know develop that relationship even further do you want to talk to the skills that you kind of need to obviously the legal skills but um be aware of what's going on and taking in to in the really important information that you can kind of bring back to your firm and then use that to serve the client um you know even better moving forward yeah definitely i think the second helped me to be a lot more commercial the commercial in-house lawyers um have just different um different motivations than um lawyers at a law firm they've got different pressures on them so they'll have often less time and money pressures and they don't have the time to go into all the detail that you'll do at a law firm um so i definitely i just learnt to understand the level of detail that was required in each task and not to overdo it um and to work out the communication style that might that the people that i were working for preferred um and so i think the work product and my style of communication with that client changed a lot over the course of 10 months as i learned to understand the ways that i could help help help them because they're so busy the in-house lawyers there and just working out the ways where i can make their day a little bit easier um i think yeah definitely taught me a lot about being more commercial did you find that it was less technical out there yeah definitely definitely less technical more meetings lots of emails lots of like shorter emails um and just getting things done quickly and making sure that everything kept moving and liaising between the different stakeholders so liaising between the internal stakeholders and the external law firms that were helping with tasks um keeping lists of making sure that everything was on trac
and following up with people so it was a lot more of that a lot more of like um negotiating with the different parties and making sure that everything stayed on track rather than like going away to work on one big task and how has that experience helped you since you've been back in the office more now at jws um i think just yeah just learning to people's different communication skills but also understanding what the client wants what's going to be useful to them what work product they're going to be able to take and apply to different things when when they want a short answer and when they want us to go into detail um and just being able to um not waste too much time on going and on writing a 10-page memo when all they really need is a short email looking back over your journey georgia uh what advice would you give yourself that you might not have listened to when you were younger um i think when i was younger i found legal workplaces to be quite intimidating and i did all this work experience in uni but at the start it was very much dragging my feet to go in there and get into the legal industry because it all felt a bit serious and dull and a bit intimidating um and i didn't like making mistakes um but i think the advice i would give myself is to just jump in and have a go because they they don't expect you to know everything they definitely don't expect you to know everything about the law they expect you to make mistakes um and most people most anyone who's rational and reasonable will be understanding um you know that not all your bosses will be nice but there will be ones that are nice and that you'll find out there so i think my advice would be just to just to give it a go um learn from your mistakes don't stress about making mistakes all you need to do when you make a mistake is just front up to it straight away and um i remember the first times i made big mistakes in law firms and i was like oh i really don't want to go into my boss's office right now and tell them what i've done um but it always went so much better than i expected because they were always just happy that i'd fronted up to it and then we could work out a solution together and um i don't think that they were surprised because i think you know it must happen all the time and it was always a big relief after i'd been in there and um got it off my chest so i think it's just about giving it a shot and being able to learn from your mistakes and um yeah no not being too intimidated by the workplace because they're they're just people too i think that's a really important point they're just people too and and that goes to i think when you're reaching out to anyone for you know to get a coffee to hear about the industry or whatever it is everyone's a person so that they're probably going to be nice to you um yeah on that point georgia would what would you have to say to and particularly in kind of the covert um environment that we find ourselves in now what would you say to say younger law students or people that are thinking of getting studying in studying law of how maybe some practical tips of how to reach out to people to find out a bit about the industry and and figure out you know i want to get into corporate law or tax law or employment law or whatever it might be yeah i think people are generally um willing to talk to students i think um once they they always appreciate someone taking the initiative well they usually appreciate someone taking the initiative to reach out so it can be really hard if you if you just don't know where to start because you don't know anyone in the industry and i didn't know many people in the industry but i think a great way a great starting point can be seeing what organizations and associations are out there because they'll often have student offerings for student memberships as well so i'm involved in the victorian women lawyers but that's just one of many many organizations and associations out there that facilitate networking between lawyers and between lawyers and students um so if you don't if you don't have any friends or family in the industry a good place to start is just a google search of all the different organizations that are out there and what they offer to students and then attending different networking events that they're hosting online and seminars and things like that to to get to know some people and then you might be able to find a mentor through that system or you might just be able to find people that might have contacts who you can reach out to for a chat because generally people are willing to chat i think i think that's fantastic advice people are and from my experience people are always happy to chat provided provided you're uh you approach them in the right way and you do it respectfully and um they might not respond to you straight away but that when they do get back to you quite often they're happy to give you the time of day yeah exactly if you if you can be respectful of their time and do it when it suits them and things like that then they'll really appreciate it thanks for that advice georgia and thanks for coming on the show it's been great to learn about what you do as a lawyer at johnson winton winter and slattery and uh the the types of things you are doing as an associate to justice stewart at the federal court of australia thanks for having me
