Well, students, it's a thrill for me to have as my very special guest Julia Gillard, former
prime minister.
It's great that you're here, Julia.
Thanks for joining me.
Great to be here, Hullsy.
You certainly have had an extraordinary career.
It really started with you completing a bachelor of arts and law.
Was it always a passion of yours as a young kid to be a lawyer?
I feel like, talking to law students, I should be answering yes to that question, but it
wouldn't be anywhere near true.
I spent most of my childhood thinking I'd like to be a teacher.
I really did like school a lot, my teachers.
I guess I was a good kid, and so I thought I'd like to be a teacher.
A friend's mother said to me, "You're in the debating society.
You're good at logical argument.
You should be a lawyer.
You should thinking about being a lawyer."
My dad, meanwhile, was really pressing me to choose medicine.
I knew I wouldn't like that.
Blood, guts, it's not for me.
So, I settled on doing law, but I wanted to take a bet in case I didn't like it, so I
put the arts degree with it, majoring in economics, thinking, "If I don't get into the law bit,
then I could follow the economics bit."
Once I got through the compulsory subjects at the start, which were pretty boringly taught,
and got into some of the more interesting electives, I did like the study of law.
Do you reckon the law course you undertook prepared you for the real world of work out
there?
No.
I mean, I'm about 100 years old, so I was studying my law at Adelaide University and
then at Melbourne University.
My first year at university was 1979 or something disturbingly a long time ago, and finished
it in the '80s.
I took two years off entirely to be vice president and then national president of the Australian
Union of Students.
The study of law back then was really big lectures, some tutorials, but a real focus
on the big lectures, which you had to attend in person.
There was no online.
"Let's start in 1200 and something, and painstakingly work our way through, giving no more real
emphasis to the modern law than to the old law."
It really didn't equip you in a good way.
What I did find helped was I went to Leo Cussen's.
I did the legal workshop, and that brought it all down and made it more real.
When you were doing law, and still to a large degree now, it's largely a male-dominated
profession.
Not so much now, but it certainly would have been in those days.
Did you come up against the glass ceiling as a young lawyer?
Yes, I did.
In the firm I worked, for Slater & Gordon, a progressive firm, but it was still an all-male
partnership when I was there.
When I first started, it was a sole owner, Jonathan Rothfield.
The firm had had some financial problems.
He'd taken it over to steady the ship, and then the first partners were all men.
There had only been one woman in Slater & Gordon's partnership history, and it was a very knock-about,
boysy environment.
I didn't feel that particularly as an alienating environment.
I'd been in student politics.
That was pretty boysy and knock-about, too, but looking back on it now, I can see how
it would have been very confronting for a number of women, and made it feel like it
wasn't their place.
There was certainly a culture, where you were an instructing solicitor working with barristers,
that the female solicitors were much more viewed as the personal assistant, helpmate.
You know, "Can you help get the coffee?"
rather than the legal mind in partnership with the barrister.
You didn't really see that happening.
Did you see law, and undertaking your law course, and then practising as a lawyer, did
you see that as a natural progression into politics?
I didn't put it together that way, because of the eccentric way in which I ended up doing
law.
I didn't think about being in politics until I was post my student politics experience,
but fortunately for me, they did come together, because at the end of the day, parliaments
make laws.
That doesn't mean that you can't come into parliament from every walk of life and bring
your personal experiences and values, but it is helpful to get the basics of the system,
a bill, amendments, how it's going to go through the parliament, and to have a familiarity
with reading legal language and not being completely perplexed by that.
The skills from law did come into their own then.
What do you reckon, easier to change the world as a lawyer or as a politician?
I would say as a politician.
I think you can change the world from almost any position if you believe in something,
you're passionate about it, you mobilise, you get others to join you.
So you can change the world as a lawyer, but you'll never have more power in your hands
and more ability to flip the levers of change then you will through politics.
I'm a big believer in encouraging young people to think about politics as a career, men and
women, Labour and Conservative.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
This is our nation.
This is our world, and if it's not you who's going to step forward, then who is it going
to be?
Okay, last question.
We've got many, many students watching this.
They're not sure where their legal career path is going to go.
They're not even sure they've done the right thing in undertaking a law course.
If you had one or two bits of advice for our students, what would those bits of advice
be?
I think firstly, I'd be open to new opportunities.
I think a lot of law students, and this is pushed on you in some ways, mechanically see,
"I finish my law course.
I get articles.
I do a legal workshop.
I burrow away in a firm.
I'm an associate, then I get to be a partner."
Life's mapped out.
Some of the most interesting things that will come your way will be just from the periphery
of your eyesight, something you wouldn't have thought about before, but it'll be a great
opportunity.
So don't get stuck in the rut.
Then the second thing, particularly in this pressurised world we live in now, I worked
a million hours a week when I was a young lawyer.
I just can't imagine what it's like now for young lawyers.
Remember to take care of yourself, your personal health, your mental health.
It might seem like it's do or die, and if you don't stay until midnight, the world's
going to fall apart.
But you know what, really?
Mostly the sun comes up the next day if you go home at a decent hour, get to see your
family and friends, treat yourself a bit more gently.
Great advice.
Fantastic career, Julia.
Congratulations on that, and thanks for joining me and giving some fantastic advice to our
students.
Thank you.