Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to locate

• information on career planning
• potential employers
• job opportunities
• sources of project grant funding.

Career planning

Career planning will assist you to find the right job after completion of your studies. Future employment opportunities include:

• work in the legal profession
• para-legal work in private enterprise
• postgraduate or postdoctoral fellowships
• part-time, casual or contract positions in higher education
• a full-time academic position
• a public service career
• work in the non-profit sector.

Your institution

Talking with your supervisor and other academic staff is often a useful first step in career planning. However, this is only the beginning. Your next step should be to contact the career advisers at your institution. They will be able to assist you in planning your career and equipping yourself for the job market.

Success in the job market involves more than simply completing your studies. Consider how you can gain the transferrable skills increasingly in demand from employers. Competition for the best jobs in law is fierce. Academic qualifications and good results can only take you so far. Voluntary and paid work in the non-profit or community sector is an excellent way of acquiring and demonstrating a wider range of skills. Temporary placements at a legal firm as part of your studies are equally useful.

Look carefully at your résumé. Have you included everything that you have accomplished? A résumé which includes research papers, submissions, community law work, mooting presentations, and details of cases handled (and won) will help you find the job you want.

Law societies

Many of the State and Territory law societies maintain online resources to assist legal graduates in career planning. Among the most useful are the pages at the sites of the Law Institute of Victoria and the NSW Law Society.

The NSW Young Lawyers has a useful booklet on starting out as a lawyer in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.

Other sources

There are a number of online sources of career-planning information. These include:

• GradsOnline. This site gives the findings of the annual Graduate Destination Survey (GDS). The GDS will allow you to compare starting salaries for different industries and determine hiring patterns.
• Graduate Opportunities. This site provides links to graduate employment opportunities in Australia and New Zealand.
• Job Outlook. The Job Outlook site provides information on hours of work, areas of employment, job turnover, employment growth and job prospects for a range of occupations.
• JobSearch. The JobSearch site includes job advertisements and tools such as an online resume creator that you can use to promote yourself to prospective employers.
• Off-Shore Employment Links for Australian Professionals (OSELAP). The OSELAP site offers links and information relating to employment opportunities with international government and non-government organisations.
• Unigrad. The Unigrad site contains information on the latest graduate job opportunities.

Some useful publications include Graduate Jobs Guideand Graduate Opportunities. Copies of these publications are usually available at the Careers Office at your university.

Some advice Airlie Bell, the Careers Officer at UNE, has some advice for job seekers. Her advice is not to limit your search by looking for a specific position. Don't expect to find a job which dovetails exactly with your thesis topic. If you have just completed a thesis, say, on the family law in South Australia, you probably won’t find many advertisement for SA Family Law Officer at your local CentreLink office. Think more broadly. For example, look at positions relating to family law in other States and Territories, in a Government agency or a legal firm specialising in this area of law. What about a job as a researcher in the not-for-profit sector, an academic position or work in a think-tank such as the Law Reform Commission. Airlie encourages postgraduates to follow these steps: Decide what skills you have to offer. These are not limited to your knowledge of a specialised topic, but may include analytical skills, database management, writing skills, experience in teamwork and problem-solving skills. Determine which fields interest you. Identify organisations or agencies which are potential employers. If an organisation is working in a field that interests you, it is very likely that they will employ people with your type of skills. It is much easier to target employers than search for specific job titles. Spend 30 minutes thinking about these issues. Write down the skills you have to offer and the fields which interest you. Has this exercise proved useful? If so, go onto to identify some potential employers using the information on this page.

Finding potential academic employers

Part-time, casual and contract employment opportunities in the university sector are usually advertised on the Web sites of individual universities. Links to Australian university sites are available from the Universities Australia site. Another approach is to scan the Weekend classified sections of the major Australian dailies, including the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, Canberra Times and the Courier Mail. The Higher Education Supplement in each Wednesday's Australian is a particularly useful source of employment prospects in the tertiary sector.

Public sector employers

The range of potential employers in the public sector is staggering. Major Commonwealth agencies which employ legal professionals include:

• Attorney-General's Department
• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
• Australian Government Solicitor
• Australian Law Reform Commission
• Australian Securities and Investments Commission
• Australian Taxation Office
• Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC)
• Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
• International Legal Services Advisory Council
• National Competition Council
• Parliament of Australia.

In addition to these Federal agencies and departments, there are also similar agencies in each of the States and Territories. For example, there are no less than eight independent Legal Aid Commissions in addition to the peak body, National Legal Aid.

Vacancies in the Commonwealth Public Service are advertised widely in the newspapers and on the APSjobs site. This site allows you to search for job opportunities across the Commonwealth Sector. You can create your own account and set up alerts, so that you receive an email when suitable jobs arise. In addition, the site contains helpful advice on making applications for positions within the APS.

Information on current job opportunities in the State public sectors is available from these sites:

• Australian Capital Territory (ACT Gazette)
• New South Wales
• Northern Terrritory
• Queensland
• South Australia
• Tasmania
• Victoria
• Western Australia.

Graduate recruitment Most government departments have graduate recruitment programs. These programs typically aim to attract specialists from a wide range of disciplines, including law. The Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) is a good example. The Department is not just looking for rural science or natural resources graduates. Rather, it is also seeking graduates across the range of disciplines, including legal studies graduates. Find information on graduate recruitment programs for any State or Commonwealth departments that interest you. Ask yourself if any of these programs meet your needs.

Private sector employers

Private sector employers of law graduates are too numerous to list. Most large legal firms in Australia now have their own Web site. Such sites can give you an idea of the firm's area of specialisation and specific career opportunities. A partial list of Australian law firms is available at FindLaw

There are also a number of sites which specialise in posting information on private sector employment opportunities for legal professionals. Among these are:

• ALSAnet. This is a database of legal jobs maintained by the Australian Law Students' Association.
• TotallyLegal. TotallyLegal is a new site which has a database of over 11,000 law vacancies including jobs for lawyers, solicitors, legal secretaries, legal PA's, paralegals and other support roles. The site allows you to sign up for alerts of any new position matching your experience and specialist area.

There are many more generalised sites that offer information on new job opportunities. Seek advertises itself as Australia's leading employment site. A rival site is MyCareer. Both sites allow you to limit your search to legal jobs, save your searches, and create email alerts.

Apart from jobs with legal firms, many major companies now require legal or para-legal staff. The Graduate Opportunities site provides detailed profiles for over 180 major companies. Each profile includes the company's vision, its national and multinational activities, specific career choices and further contact details.

Many peak industry bodies provide portal sites which link graduates to employment opportunities in their sector. An example is the careers site provided by the Mining Council of Australia.

Making your own opportunities

Cold calling and sending an unsolicited résumé to a law firm are one way of making your own opportunities. Another is to join a professional association. These typically host a range of events: seminars, conferences, presentations and social functions. Such events provide ideal opportunities to met potential employers.

Professional associations come in a range of guises. The major ones are the law societies in each state or territory. These are:

• Law Institute of Victoria
• Law Society of New South Wales
• Law Society of South Australia
• Law Society of Queensland
• Law Society of Tasmania
• Law Society of Western Australia
• Law Society of the Northern Territory
• Law Society of Australian Capital Territory.

There also are many smaller, specialised bodies such as the Australian Law Teachers Association (ALTA) or the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society.

It is also a good idea to join your institution or Law School’s alumni association.

If you intend an academic career, another aspect of successful networking is becoming familiar with key researchers in your discipline. These people are sometimes in a position to provide employment after your studies have ended. Established researchers often require qualified personnel for ongoing work or research projects. A further option is to work with other researchers to generate new employment opportunities in the form of grant-funded positions.

Research Grants

Consider if the results of your research might lend itself to further developments, either in the form of commercialisation or a specific project. Research in areas such as bioethics or patent law can often have immediate commercial applications. A number of government and private bodies provide funding for promising research.

The Australian Government Science Portal has a site dedicated to research grants and programs.There are also a range of funding arrangements possible under schemes administered by State government agencies.

There is generally a delay of several months between the submission of a successful funding application and the start of the project, so plan well ahead.

Summary

This module dealt with the following:

• finding information on career planning
• locating potential employers
• finding job advertisements
• making your own employment opportunities.