I love it. Hi! I'm Mitree, I'm one of the law
students at UQ. I'm joined by one of my lecturers Ryan
and we're here to answer your questions. Thank you.
Right Mitree, what kind of student are you?
Are you really dedicated, a bit slack or somewhere in between?
I'd like to think I'm somewhere somewhere in between but I'd have to say
that I am quite slack with my studies. It's not my main
priority, I like to have a balance between studying, working and
volunteering. So Ryan, how do you prepare law
students for their future when we don't know what the future looks
like? Well Mitree, I tend to think about that in
terms of well, we need to look at what we have now, in
terms of technology, so obviously the legal profession a lot of people say is
going to be subject to rapid change, technology is going to improve, the
nature of legal services is going to evolve and be quite different
and yes we can speculate a bit about how those services are going to evolve,
how the technology is going to evolve but what I say is sort of look at what
we have now, what's the current technology?
What can you do with the current technology? What aspects of
the legal profession and legal services can be automated now
using the technology that we have? I think that's quite a good stepping stone
because if you're on top of what we can do now
and capability now, obviously you're going to have
a better perspective from which you can anticipate
sort of future changes. That's very insightful.
How does the way you learn at UQ, teach you the skills you need
to face an unknown future? Well I think what you can get through UQ as a
law student is a strong foundational understanding
of legal theory and what can be automated
through innovative technology it's generally the processes or the practices
that you have in legal practice and as such having that strong
foundational base is what can't be changed by technology. I've
learned how much satisfaction that I can find
in helping people. Through the experiences I've had,
through the UQ Pro Bono Centre or just volunteering in general
with the Community Legal Centre, I've been able to engage and help
people who are truly vulnerable, they can't
find assistance anywhere else and I find a lot of satisfaction in being able to
help them. So Ryan, what opportunities do your
students have to get hands-on experience in our industry?
Okay so there's a range of opportunities here at UQ for you to get practical
experience. The pro bono opportunities that you
have at the university, we have opportunities for students to work with
community legal centres, mooting is a great focus here so there
are a range of mooting competitions that you can enter into - many of which are
international, many of which we here at UQ have won.
There are also opportunities through the law school for you to obtain work
experience including overseas and we also have an
employment specialist, so we set you up quite well
so that you have a good opportunity to get one of the clerkships at one of the
law firms and then that can be a stepping stone,
that's where you get a lot of your practical experience
and that can be a stepping stone to obviously a full-time job as a lawyer
which I assume is what you're all after. What does a day
in the life of a UQ law student look like? Well I think
a day in the life of a typical law student would
generally be showing up to maybe one or two of your seminars that
we now have just three hour blocks where you interact with your tutors,
after that you might head off to the library and do some study or work on
some assignments and then you might just hang around the Great
Court and chat to your friends. What about
what about extra-curricular activities? Well there's actually quite a
lot of extra-curricular activities you can undertake
through the law school whether that's work experience through the Pro Bono
Centre, you can volunteer with a community legal centre
or you could take part in mooting. There's other competitions like
the KWM Transform Law Competition. Have you won that?
Yes I have.
You can also just have a walk around, I think UQ as a campus
is truly outstanding, there's all the facilities that you need
there's there's all the facilities that you need,
there's gyms, you know you can ride your bike here, lock up, have a shower.
There's just everything you need, you could just live on campus if you wanted
to. What is it about UQ's approach that make
us the most employable graduates in the state?
Okay so unlike a lot of other universities we have small
class sizes so you might have a lecture and then a two hour seminar
with about 40 students or so you might just have a three hour seminar
of 40 students or so and what that does is it means that
we can engage with you, I often get to know most of my students, they get to
know me. You're taught by someone who's an expert
in their field or a leading professional, so you're getting
a really high quality education where you engage with the seminar leader
and you really deal with some complex legal issues, you interact with other
students, you argue with other students and in the end what that does is it
prepares you to enter legal practice, the legal profession
because you've actually been in an environment where you've sort of been
tested- I've asked you questions, you've been
able to answer them, you've come prepared for these group discussions and that
really does prepare you to enter the legal profession, whatever part of
the legal profession that might be because you're able to interact in a
group setting having thought about the law,
having prepared before the seminar, come along ready to engage,
ready to interact and I really think that's a unique thing
about what we offer at UQ that sort of interactive,
engaging, learning process. You're working as a lawyer.
If you were employing the next law graduate what would you look for?
Right, well at least a few things. First of all, you need to be
technically excellent, you need to have a good understanding of the law, you need
to be able to engage in sophisticated legal reasoning
and work through a legal problem right. Second of all, you need to be able to
express yourself clearly in written form,
you need to be able to prepare a piece of work that you can submit to
your supervising partner or supervising lawyer
and they can understand it and third, you need to be able to work
as part of the team, you need to be able to
cooperate with your colleagues,
work with other members of the team and produce
work as part of that group ultimately to serve your client. Mitree, what is
the most interesting thing you've learned that
has not been part of your studies? I think the most interesting thing i've
learned outside of my studies is definitely how difficult it is to
navigate the legal system and understand laws if you don't have any form of legal
education. A lot of people seem to think that the
law is just words and therefore if you can understand
English you probably have no problem interpreting them but there's so much
more to that you need, you know, a deep understanding
of theory and from that you're able to understand how
the laws interact and how you're supposed to interpret them
and these are some of the barriers that just ordinary people can't get
through. How many hours study each week do you
expect a law student do? How many do you do?
So just on the law subjects, I would anticipate, say
you've got three contact hours per subject
and you should really be doing five or six hours per subject in
addition to those three hours so 20 hours if you're doing
two subjects. What you would do during those six hours is, so for example I
teach Law of Contract 1 and Law of Contract 2
and in those subjects there's about 600 pages worth of reading,
it's about 500 pages worth of reading in the first semester. So each week you
need to go through and read the cases right, they're the primary sources. You
need to read the cases, you need to try to develop an understanding of them
yourself and you need to take some notes about what the law is,
then you come into the seminar ready to discuss the seminar problem, ready to
apply that law to the problem and that's what makes the process a
collaborative and entertaining one because everybody's
come in prepared. That makes sense.
It makes sense. It does make sense. There you go. I can't relate
though but...