Anna von Dietze was a fully qualified lawyer in Germany before moving to Australia to embark on 20 more months of legal study to be able to practise in the country. Von Dietze, who graduated in the top 3 per cent of her year in Germany, says her decision to move to Australia was initially a huge step backwards and put her passion for the law to the test.

"Not only did I have to go back to law school but I also faced the pressure of proving to Australian employers and to myself that I could compete with Australian lawyers," she says.

However in July 2007, von Dietze joined Baker & McKenzie and, after rotations in corporate and technology, communications and commercial practice, recently settled in intellectual property. She also provides pro bono advice at the Homeless Persons Legal Service (HPLS) and assists with the LEAPS mentoring program.

Von Dietze has faced the challenge of having trained in a civil law jurisdiction and then moving into practice in common law - as well as having English as her second language.

"The civil law system is based on the assumption that any factual scenario can be resolved by applying existing statutory law, whereas in a common law jurisdiction, statutory law complements case law. While it was certainly a challenging task to get my head around these and other conceptual differences, practising law in a foreign language is even more so," she says.

"Overnight, you are expected to write in perfect plain English, to know the legal jargon and to be able to read and analyse 200 page-long decisions. Try that in a language that is not your native one! I think that is the biggest challenge lawyers face when leaving one jurisdiction to practise in another."