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Graduate development diaries

As you are starting your legal career, a key concern will undoubtedly be the type of work you will be doing and how that will contribute to your development.

At Sparkes, the trust we place in our graduate lawyers will ensure that you won't get stuck doing repetitive tasks. Our goal is to help you to contribute to our clients and the Firm as quickly as possible.

To help you get a taste of what life would be like, we have asked one of our graduate alumni, Anne Klasen, to think about how her skills evolved through each of her 3 month rotations and document a "development diary".

Hear from Anne about her progression through the program.

Anne Klasen - Lawyer, CTP, Major Claims "In my first 6 months I was able to run small files (all debt recovery work) which included drafting small advices and a significant amount of contact from clients which was quite unusual for the first rotation.

I also drafted court documents (mainly Statements of Claim) had a high degree of autonomy and some responsibility which was both challenging and rewarding. Prioritising was a huge challenge.

In my second rotation, I had much more task orientated work. I worked very closely with the partner in the group. I attended Court more frequently to instruct Counsel and also to attend status conferences and directions hearings at Court which was a good way to meet my peers and also challenging. I also gained more experience drafting court documents (defences, requests for particulars etc). I began drafting advices to clients which included looking at evidence such as medical reports, tax returns, subpoenaed material and advising about how much compensation an injured Plaintiff should receive and why.

Once I started my permanent position, I began drafting more complex advices on liability issues (ie, where we dispute that our client is at fault) and also on multi-million dollar claims, continued to brief Counsel and attend Court and have begun to have some more client contact and more autonomy in file work."

View the details of Anne's rotations here.