Do What Matters | Final insights for clerkship success

[Music] We would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners on which we are recording today, the Warondry people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders both past and present. [Music] Hi everyone, we are back in your ears today for one final episode of the Do What Matters series. I'm Emily Kid and as always I'm joined by my co-host, Pete Gavaralis and I produce a Charlotte Verly. How are you guys today? I'm very good thank you and I'm sure you're super excited by the news that Taylor Swift is engaged. Yeah I'm I'm pretty happy for her. You know it's been a big week for me and her so we're all pretty delighted by that. No one fan. Yes. Charlotte how are you? I'm good. Good to have you back from Europe, Pete. How are you feeling? I'm feeling good and feeling refreshed and ready for the final episode. I know well it is very exciting. Finally come to the end of our series. So to round out what has been a very enjoyable season. Today we're going to be answering all of your questions. We pulled our listeners on the Maddox Instagram stories this week and we have received a bunch of really good questions that we're going to try and get through today. So should we just jump straight into it guys? I think so. Let's do it. So we've got a first question that we received via Instagram. The first question that we've got today is and I'll put it to both of you. What sort of questions should I expect in an interview and what should I do if I'm a little bit shy? I think we kind of touched on this one maybe in a previous episode but I think the kinds of questions you can expect in an interview will be the same sort of things you'll touch on in your cover letter. So why do you want to work at Maddox? Tell us about yourself and maybe what kind of skills can you bring to the firm. I think you might also expect some behavioral questions. Rose Bundrock in one of our episodes touched on this. We asked those questions to sort of level out the assessment of the interviews and so you can expect some behavioral questions such as name a time you face the challenge and how you overcame that for example. Pete do you want to maybe talk about how you can approach the interview if you're feeling a bit shy? Yeah I think the Y Maddox question is a big one and you really want to be able to cater your answers as much as possible to Maddox and why you see yourself as a fit here and why you think you have the attributes to set yourself up for success as a lawyer here at Maddox and I think one that will often come up in Clarkship interviews is maybe talking a little bit more about your uni days so why did you get into law? Why are you interested in law and maybe you might get a question about what your favorite unit was at uni so yeah? Yeah I would agree with that and I think touching on that as well it's also really important to make sure you explain what stands out to you about Maddox. What makes it different to the other firms and what is it that draws you to the firm? Yeah. I think the other kind of questions that listen is likely to get are obviously the behavioral questions and I think we also touched on this in a previous episode but you will certainly get behavioral questions so if you don't know like a behavioral question is kind of asking you how you would manage a situation or asking you about a piece of experience and I think a really good way to approach those questions is using the star method. I don't know if you guys remember that from your interviewing days but for the listeners that haven't heard about this the star method is basically where you will answer a question describing the situation, the task, the action and the result so for example you might pick up a situation that relates to the question that could be anything and then you're going to talk about how you handled that situation so the task or responsibility that you had the actions that you took to address that and then the outcome so that's kind of a really nice way to round out. The answer to a question stops you from waffling which is ironic because that's not doing that now. All right well let's move on to question two how to stand out in interviews so we've talked about the questions a little bit but maybe what more generally would you say is recommend for students to be able to stand out in terms of the way they approach it whether it's you know their preparation for it or how they're performing in it as well. I think preparation is really important. It makes you feel more confident which I think means you'll present better in the interview. I think though with preparation it's important to try and sound natural and not too scripted. I know that's easier said than done. We all want to practice the script that we've prepared in front of the mirror but I think it is best to sound natural and try to have a conversation with the person who is interviewing you. I think that's the best way to build rapport and I think that'll help you stand out. I agree I think another good one is to research your interviewer if you're told them ahead of time but don't be married to this your interviewer could change on the day for any reason so you need to be kind of flexible but I think knowing a little bit about that individual's practice area is really nice and that will help you stand out so that probably ties into what you were saying Charlotte about pre-prep but yeah just making sure that you don't feel scared to kind of look someone up on LinkedIn or you know even other people at the firm who might not necessarily be interviewing you I think it shows a genuine interest. Yeah I think my key recommendation was similar to what Charlotte said and it's to try and make the interview less of an interview and probably more of a conversation and as conversational as possible so when you're being asked a question or something comes up try and flip it on a TED and ask the interviewer a question about their experience in that sort of situation or how that comes up in their day-to-day life as a lawyer so that's a good way of flipping the interview and making it a bit more of that conversation where you get the interviewer talking a bit more I think. I agree with that, Pete I think those are both very good suggestions so another question that we got from one of our listeners was will there be another opening for Clarkship and Law Graduate Programs? This is probably a bit more of a clear cut answer than the other ones. Charlotte would you like to take them out? Unfortunately Clarkship and Graduate Programs are set by the Law Institute of Victoria and we follow their guidelines here at Maddix so if you missed out on applying for Clarkship this year I'd say try to apply next year alternatively you can always look at market offers so they are also managed by LAB except they're on a bit of a different timeline so priority offers for graduate positions are given to people who have either Clarked at the firm or have worked at the firm in appropriate capacity so that can be legal assistance or paralegals but firms do also go to market which is just a general opportunity to apply for a graduate position at that firm so definitely keep your eye open for those offers and then there are also firms that are not signatory to the LAB so they can put things out basically whenever they want so it's just about keeping an eye on what's going on and things like that so there are definitely opportunities but they are a fix to certain schedules I suppose. All right on to our next question and I might put this one to you are you expected to research about the practice areas of your interviewers? Yes that's a great question I think my response to that would be that obviously nobody expects you to know everything about a firm or a particular practice area before you've kind of worked in it and I think that working in a firm in an area in practice is very different to studying at a university as well but I do think that it is important to have an idea of the kind of work that a firm does and the kind of work that a practice area does. I think this probably goes back to what we were saying earlier about seeming prepared, engaged and interested. If you kind of walk into an interview and you're being interviewed by a partner who's done X-thing for their whole life and you appear to have no genuine interest or knowledge about that then it is going to come across as though you don't really care about the interview you don't value the time of the person interviewing you and it will also just help you engage with them that is kind of the focal touch point of these interviews as the work so it's a really easy way to kind of discuss what's going on in the firm and what your interests are it's really good leaping pad. I think in terms of that conversational point that I mentioned before if you've got knowledge about the practice areas in the firm and particularly the practice group that the person that is interviewing you works in then that is going to make it much more easier for you to be able to bring a topic up that can then lead to a conversational point otherwise then more likely your interview is going to end up in a more Q&A style. It's not to say that you have to do that. If you have a particular interest in a specific practice area and the person who's interviewing you does not work in that practice area, I would encourage everyone to kind of bring that interest to the interview too because it's genuine and it still reflects a deep level of engagement with the law and the firms and things like that. So that's certainly not a hard line yet. Yeah, I think that's absolutely valid, particularly because that might be a key point why you're interested in Maddox, for example. It might be because you're really interested in another practice area or two, so you can talk to that and talk to why you're interested in Maddox and why you want to go through the grad program and actually have experience in those areas. I agree. So the next question that we have is what is the minimum wham that we need to be considered? This is another difficult question. I think we've kind of touched on this in a previous episode. At Maddox, we don't have a set wham that you need to be considered for the Clarkship, but there are other things that can kind of be considered on this question. It might throw that over to you now, Charlotte. Yeah, I think your right Rose did touch on this one in a previous episode in more detail, but Maddox usually assesses the applications holistically. So they'll be looking at everything. They'll take into account not only your academic scores, but also your experiences, both volunteering and employment, your education, your extracurriculars, even your interests and your broader skill set. So it's really important to highlight that in your application. If there are particular circumstances which may explain why your grades may be lower than what you would normally expect, you can bring this up. You can address this in the application or in the interview if you feel like that's important to explain. Great. So I think that's probably covered most of the questions that we received regarding the application process and kind of other things. Now we've got a bunch of questions about doing a Clarkship which are really interesting. So I think that we might jump into these if that works for you guys. So the first question that we have from one of our listeners is what can I expect from the Clarkship program? Usually in the Clarkship program you'll go through an induction in the first couple of days and this will involve just training on the IT systems. You'll also speak to our library teams as well which is really useful for legal research skills and other things like that. And there'll also be most likely some social events as well in the broader firm and some other particular teams too. And then really you just get stuck into the work. So that's when you'll go into a team for roughly a week and a half here at Maddox and then you'll experience that, you'll do work in the team for a week and a half and then you'll go back to kind of coming together as a Clark group again and doing some activities at the start of the third week and then you'll go into the second team that you rotate through. So just a reminder that here at Maddox you will rotate through two different teams as a Clark. Yeah, perfect. I think that's a really good overview of the program. It's really good fun and it's nice to have a variety of different tasks to get immersed into. So the next question that we have is what is the best way to prepare for the Clarkship itself and how do I make sure that I stand out when I'm doing a Clarkship? This is a really, really important question. I think that this is probably a question that we've received a few times in different wording. So Pete, would you like to do the honours? Yes, I think firstly it's really important to be yourself in the Clarkship because you'll be able to engage with people more and you'll be able to develop better relationships, not only with your Clark group but also with the people that work at the firm to understand if you're actually a fit for Maddox or any other firm that you Clark are. I think it's also really important to be curious and intrigued by the work that you're doing and the work that the teams you rotate in are actually doing. This will demonstrate that you actually are interested and you do want to work at Maddox and you do really actually want to work in the law because I think if it comes across that you're not engaged in the work then most likely that will raise some concerns that perhaps you're not the best fit for that team because I know that the teams are really interested in having juniors come through that are really interested in the work that they do and are passionate about being a part of Maddox. So I think that's really important as well and I think it's also really useful to be able to try and do some work for a variety of people during your rotations in the Clark ship because being able to work with a variety of people will allow you to learn from different people's skill sets and you'll also be able to gain feedback from different people and that will help you improve as well in the future. Yeah, I think those are all great comments, Pete and I actually might hijack off that and add in one of the other questions that we received which is what sort of tasks would I be expected to do as a Clark? I think this ties into what you were saying about kind of being curious about the work and trying to source work from different people. So as a Clark you could literally be asked to do any sort of work. I know when I was in construction some of the Clarks got to go out on site to one of the projects that we were doing which is obviously a super cool opportunity. When I was a Clark I was taken into meetings, I helped prepare discrete parts of advice. You can literally be asked to do pretty much anything. Obviously noting the fact that you're not in the team for a long period of time the work will generally be more discrete but I think that people at the firm will really want to give you the kind of work that you want to do and they'll want to give you work that allows you to demonstrate what you're capable of and also gives you a feel for what you might be able to do. So I think that that tied into what you were saying about being curious and I think Billion Clare mentioned this in their episode earlier on the series where they said that what they kind of look for in junior lawyers is just a genuine curiosity towards the work that they're doing regardless of kind of what it is. So I think that they kind of all come into one. So yeah. Yeah. And going off on another question that we received through the Instagram poll, if students are struggling to get work whilst they're rotating in a team, how would you guys recommend that they actually seek that work out so that they do have the best experience possible and they're able to work on a variety of things? I think communication is really important. As a Clark you'll be assigned a buddy and a coordinator. I think they're your first protocol. I think talking to your coordinator about how you can either try to get work or how they could sort of try to advocate for you to get work. I think that's really important. So I would say use your coordinator and use your buddy, talk to them about how to approach that and they will probably be able to give you some really helpful advice. I agree with that. I think don't be scared to kind of message people, go and knock on office doors. I think this also ties into another question that we received, which is how do I approach people and integrate myself into the team? I think that is a really hard thing to kind of get the confidence to do when you're at Clark. You're not there for long and it feels like quite a high pressure situation. But remember that like, at Maddox especially, we love having Clarks and it really brings like a sense of life to the team that you know it's just different to what we have the rest of the year. And it's going to be really excited to have you, everyone wants to give you work, everybody wants to kind of make sure that you have the best experience possible. So really don't be scared to go and knock on the door of someone and introduce yourself and ask them for a bit of work. Don't be scared to message someone. Use your buddy, use your coordinators and use junior lawyers. So we're all first years and we are so happy to help the Clarks if they send us a message or come over to our desk and obviously there's a little bit less differentiation in hierarchy and sometimes an age between different levels. So that can be, if that's a little bit less intimidating, then use your juniors and ask them for help too. Yep. And going on to another question, we got, how should I approach work where I am unfamiliar with the topic? And so this was something for example that I experienced when I was a Clark and worked in the construction team. I felt like I was really out of my depth at times and so that was really challenging for me. I might put this to MFIRST because you also went through construction so I'm not sure if you had a similar experience but how would you go about working in a practice group where you might not have studied that area at uni and you don't have that kind of foundational base? Yeah, I think that's difficult because as we mentioned before I think the Clarkships feel very high pressure. But you have to remember that nobody expects you to know how to do things. You're there to learn. And I think that that is a lot easier said than done. Obviously, you'll be came to impress and as you should be. But I think that probably if you're super unfamiliar with it, the first thing that I would do is approach a junior in the team. So approach either the grad, the first year, the second year, and just ask them if they have ever done a piece of work like this before. Could they talk you through it? Do they have an example? You can look on the filing system so you can search via keywords, so you could have a look on that to see if anyone's done previous advice on this so that you could help get your head around what's going on. Google something, you know, Google is a really great source to get an understanding of what something means. And then when you get into the nitty gritty of it, you're going to be more able to discern what's going on because you've got an overview of what has happened. And so I think that's a really hard thing, but yet don't be afraid to ask for help. That's what people are there for and people want to help and just kind of do the best that you can. If you find that you're really stuck and you kind of need to submit a piece of work, the most helpful thing that you can do is tell someone why you did something. So or why you think something and that's pretty much 90% of the job. You might not have the final answer 100% correct, but as long as you kind of explain your reasoning that is pretty much all you can do. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. Yeah, that actually is super helpful because being able to take a certain path and explain why why you took that path is really important because that might lead down a direction that someone else might not have thought of before. And so it can provide a really good outcome for a client that might be actually quite unexpected. And I think I was also going to add on to what you've said that just asking questions is actually really important because it goes back to that curiosity point. And the worst thing you can do is not ask questions and then get something wrong because that will show then that you're not taking that proactive step to seek further clarification. Or you haven't thought about what the right questions are and go on and ask those questions. And so if you don't ask those questions that could lead to potentially an assumption that you do understand a bit more what you're doing. And so I think the best thing that you can do is a junior is ask questions and go through the work a little bit more. And then you can go and ask further questions down the track until you finalize the work because that will most likely lead to the best outcome and the best piece of work possible. I think that's great advice Pete. That is probably all we have time for and that brings us to an end of this whole series for this year at least. So I guess I might hit you guys with one last question before we sign off. Tell me what do you both love about your job Pete you can kick us off. I quite enjoy the technicalities in employment law which is really nerdy. I think employment law is actually a super interesting area because it does have a lot of practicalities of that employee, employer relationships. So I think something that I quite enjoy about my job is getting into the nitty gritty of a complicated question when I'm doing some research or something like that. I love that. What about you? I think this has been a bit of a consistent theme throughout the series but what I love most about my job is the people I get to work with including both of you doing this podcast is definitely a highlight of the job. But no, here at Maddox and I know you've all heard before on the podcast because everyone keeps saying it but truly the people at Maddox are great to work with. We foster a really collaborative community here and I think everyone's so willing to help everyone's friendly and it's a great place to work. And so I look forward to coming to work each day because I get to work with really impressive people who I can learn from. So that's the highlight of the job for me. And what about you? What's your favourite part about your job? Well obviously I echo what you just said Charlotte picked not so much you but then your employment law. But I think that probably what I've loved the most about my job at least this year having settled has been the opportunity to learn and to feel as though I'm progressing. I have really enjoyed getting a little bit more responsibility and being able to kind of stand on my own two feet try and do things that I haven't done before. Get the feedback and implement it and then therefore being able to produce some work that I look back on and I'm actually really proud of. It kind of has made me feel like the process has all been worth it and it's really nice to kind of put in the work with a senior that you enjoy working with and comes the end of it and look back and be like wow that's a really good piece of work. I'm kind of proud of myself for doing that and that's something that I definitely couldn't have done 18 months ago or even you know five months ago so it's really nice to feel as though I'm constantly learning and yeah that's probably what I love the most about my job right now. There is some light at the end of the tunnel. Well I think we'll sign off there. Thank you so much to everyone that's listened to season one of the podcast and hopefully we're in your ears very soon for another episode. Wonderful thank you guys bye. Thank you bye. 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