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#auslaw must make better inroads with high school students
The modern legal marketplace is a rapidly evolving beast, and secondary students should be made better aware of their vocational options by those in practice.
Jerome Doraisamy
“I feel people in the legal profession should visit more high schools where young people like myself want to learn more about the career paths. This would be highly effective, as I have not had many opportunities to learn more about the law in ways that help me engage with the legal profession.”
“Law is a very broad area; often unknowingly will a student highlight an interest in law with some form of blinkers attached. Law is a whole lot more than courtroom battles as dictated on television. Law is everything from ensuring contracts are protecting whose names appear on them, to ensuring Australian trade is lawful under various obligations. Also, from protecting people’s rights, the environment to music and any form of visual or written content in existence... plus, a whole lot more,” he posited.
“When students leave school with an interest in law, they set their sights on tertiary training that also has a high price, for rural, regional and remote students this price is sometimes doubled with living costs and expenses.
“So, a choice and decision based on a guess or bad information [are] going to create a lot of pain.”
Making greater inroads with high school students will also serve to dispel preconceptions those students might have about the place that law has in our society.
According to a female year 10 student at Calrossy, the legal profession must do better at showcasing its importance: “There is a strong stereotypical influence on law due to media influence and I believe the environment portrayed actually scares some students away before they are able to understand that law can be practised in different environments and there are many areas of law, they can specialise in.”
“Legal professions need to outline the opportunities that come with law, what the workplace is actually like,” she argued.
A fellow female student agreed, albeit coming at it from the angle of better appreciating the nature of vocational paths: “There are so many university degrees and options to study law, how do we know which courses are both relevant to our interest and likely to help us get a job when we graduate? If I were to study a bachelor of laws and a bachelor of social science is it worth also incorporating the offered diploma of legal practice as well? Would receiving the diploma improve my employability?”
Allowing students to be informed and aware of their “careers in law” interests, Mr Impey surmised, is vital from a “whole of legal sector” perspective, he said, because “this will [help ensure] that quality and well-informed graduates will come through at the other end to fill the needs of the sector”.
“This is why that all-important and up-to-date sector trend information, occupational needs and regularly updated sector workforce needs and analysis [are] vital for both the [school-leaver] as they make their way into first-year tertiary studies and for the full-time tertiary student as they get closer to graduating, to ensure they are selecting the best options for them in terms of their subject majors and other choices along the tertiary way,” he argued.
“It is vitally important that students have the highest quality and most accurate advice and information available to help them make an informed choice and decision on their career [and] education futures.”
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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