In conversation with Lawyers Weekly, College of Law customer insights senior manager Beth McVicker-Murphy and national career strategists Ruth Beran and Susan Pincus discussed the various challenges they’ve seen both mature-age students and undergraduate students experience when beginning their legal careers.

Mature-age students

Mature age students make up 20 per cent of the College of Law’s yearly graduates – but also face unique challenges.

“One of the biggest challenges facing mature-age PLT graduates is that despite years of experience in the workforce, and salaries that compensate their career stage, entering the law usually requires starting in a junior position with lower status and pay,” Beran said.

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Mature-age students also generally have greater financial and family commitments, as they are at a later stage in life, added Pincus.

“This means they can struggle gaining the compulsory work experience, which is often unpaid, around these other commitments and require greater flexibility,” she said.

This lack of flexibility or adaptability can apply to more than just work schedules and family commitments and can sometimes require a complete mindset shift.

“We can see hesitation with mature-age students, in fact with a lot of students, around networking in a new industry, which is a really effective approach to job hunting,” Beran said.

“Mature-age graduates can also have very set ideas about what they are looking for and can get disheartened when it takes time and persistence. Having an open mindset is critical because working in law is a long game, and graduates can sometimes find it difficult, particularly when starting out in the profession.”

However, the COL team said there are also many benefits to coming to law later in life – and the college works with graduates to lean into their existing skill sets and life learning.

“Part of our role is to help mature-age graduates recognise and articulate their transferable skills, these can make all the difference in landing their first role and help amplify their legal trajectory,” Pincus said.

“We provide feedback on job applications and undertake mock job interviews with graduates. The college also helps students to access roles in the hidden job market through networking, developing their personal brand and optimising their LinkedIn profile. We also provide webinars twice a month with information on how to navigate the recruitment/employment market.”

McVicker-Murphy has also spoken with many mature-age students who have leveraged their existing careers and knowledge of an industry to direct their legal careers.

“In my customer engagement work, I have met with numerous past and future students who leveraged their former occupation to specialise in a particular area of law or management experience,” she said.

“For example, a pharmacist who now works in pharmaceutical law, a journalist looking to work in media law. Another mature-age graduate was able to springboard their extensive knowledge of foreign trade and investment, as well as their language skills, by working for a firm with a large Vietnamese client base.”

Undergrads

For undergraduate students, there are a number of key challenges the college has witnessed, including a lack of confidence in their abilities.

“We are finding that a number of undergrads, and even some later to law lawyers, lack confidence in their own abilities and need assistance with job applications and interviews, because many have not worked or been involved in volunteering at university during their degrees because of COVID,” Pincus said.

“Along with job search assistance, the College of Law provides a mentoring program, which has been extremely successful in helping students with confidence building, and we receive very positive feedback about this service.”

During the college’s national listening summit, McVicker-Murphy received a significant amount of feedback from third-year law students that they felt heavily directed towards attaining a clerkship and following the traditional pathway into law.

“Many students felt stressed about the vigorous clerkship process on top of their current obligations. They felt their career options were limited to getting that summer clerkship acceptance. But students in their fourth and fifth years seemed much more open to broader career paths. They viewed attaining their law degree as an opportunity to combine their legal expertise with other disciplines like in finance, entrepreneurship, policy, tech and so on,” she said.

“Optimism was evident in those students who were excited about contributing to the profession and by the changes they are seeing in the industry. However, there are still concerns about work/life balance, job satisfaction and adapting to technological change. Students are looking for employers who demonstrate diversity and genuine career development for their employees.”

Encouraging students to have an open and flexible mindset towards their careers is something the college tries to cultivate to properly equip students as they move into the profession.

“Some students are not sure which area of law they want to practice in, or even if they want to practice law at all, making it difficult for them to strategise their job search. Others are set on practising only one area of law, which can limit their job search,” Beran said.

“We help students become more creative in their job search.”