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Ugly people

07 Nov 2009 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | No comments

Berkoff v Burchill [1996] 4 All ER 1008 at 1019 per Mil­lett LJ:

It is a com­mon exper­i­ence that ugly people have sat­is­fact­ory social lives – Boris Kar­loff is not known to have been a recluse – and it is a pop­u­lar belief for the truth of which I am unable to vouch that ugly men are par­tic­u­larly attract­ive to women.

Trivia: Lord Mil­lett has a Chinese name, 苗禮治 (miu4 lai5 ci4), pre­sum­ably because he is now sit­ting on the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong.

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Media Law

07 Nov 2009 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | 4 comments

'If you like your sex life, don't stick a firecracker up your arse' -- David Rolph's media law life lesson #7

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The Inter­na­tional Free and Open Source Soft­ware Law Review – about time, although, of course, it’s more for law­yers than FOSS enthusiasts.

18 Oct 2009 by Enoch Lau | No comments

University of Sydney Graduate Destinations Report

18 Oct 2009 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | 3 comments

Ever wondered what that piece of paper is worth? The Uni­ver­sity of Sydney Gradu­ate Des­tin­a­tions Report is com­piled from sur­veys of gradu­ates four to six months after they com­plete their final year of study, and it provides an over­view of employ­ment oppor­tun­it­ies, start­ing salar­ies and job sat­is­fac­tion, amongst other things. I have some beef with the way the res­ults are col­lated (the employer table is a down­right mess, and what inform­a­tion is provided dif­fers between fac­ulties) but I’ll take the stats as gen­er­ally rep­res­ent­at­ive of the truth.

The law is, I sup­pose, per­ceived as a ver­it­able gold mine and thus a highly valu­able degree, and with an aver­age gradu­ate salary of over $79,000, one can under­stand why. But the sur­vey breaks it down fur­ther: under­gradu­ates, on aver­age, end up with over $51,000 while post­gradu­ates get over $98,000. By com­par­ison, those gradu­at­ing from under­gradu­ate dentistry earn, on aver­age, over $94,000 and work fewer hours (34 hrs/​wk as opposed to 36 hrs/​wk). What’s more, dent­ists are more happy with their job (96% as opposed to 82%). Who would’ve thought? (And 40% of law stu­dents suf­fer depres­sion at some stage. So, if you’re in high school right now and you think law is all glitz and glam­our, take another hard look, although it’s still a great degree.) As for find­ing a job, 14% of law gradu­ates weren’t employed at the time of the sur­vey, but it’s not entirely clear how many of these were study­ing fur­ther or simply not look­ing for a job; the some­what high fig­ure could also be explained by the fact that the sur­vey would’ve been con­duc­ted at the height of the fin­an­cial crisis.

Of course, there’s more to life than what you get paid, but I’ve sum­mar­ised gradu­ate gross salary by fac­ulty, and then, where pos­sible, I’ve cal­cu­lated aver­age hourly rate. The lat­ter table is use­ful, because it shows that while start­ing salar­ies can dif­fer quite markedly between fac­ulties, this dif­fer­ence can be explained, at least in part, by under-​​employment.

Sum­mary of gradu­ate gross salary by faculty

Fac­ulty Under­grad Hon­ours 1 Post­grad Over­all
Agri­cul­ture $41,949 - $49,954 $43,569
Archi­tec­ture $33,885 $46,912 $59,552 $46,968
Arts $34,316 - $46,189 $36,605
Dentistry $94,461 $100,875 $123,886 $102,315
Eco­nom­ics $39,572 $46,373 $52,494 $46,793
Edu­ca­tion $44,131 - $55,386 $49,205
Engin­eer­ing $51,384 - $69,075 $53,206
Health Sci­ences $41,514 - $61,195 $49,662
Law $51,507 - $98,927 $79,329
Medi­cine $54,271 - $77,719 $68,300
Music $29,965 $29,382 $37,659 $32,126
Nurs­ing $40,926 - $56,856 $46,167
Phar­macy $34,542 - $58,540 $40,424
Sci­ence $24,801 - $48,878 $34,738
Vet Sci­ences $39,146 $38,690 $92,750 $48,036
Visual Arts $18,307 - $29,330 $23,197

1 Data not provided for all fac­ulties (but a blank does not mean that hon­ours can­not be under­taken in that faculty).

Gradu­ate Gross Hourly Rate by Faculty

Fac­ulty Under­grad Hon­ours Post­grad Over­all
Agri­cul­ture $21.80 - $25.28 $22.65
Archi­tec­ture (aver­age hours worked not provided)
Arts $22.76 - $26.13 $23.46
Dentistry $53.43 $48.50 $61.09 $54.66
Eco­nom­ics (aver­age hours worked not provided)
Edu­ca­tion $24.96 - $29.59 $26.28
Engin­eer­ing $25.34 - $34.96 $26.93
Health Sci­ences $22.81 - $32.69 $27.29
Law $27.51 - $45.30 $37.21
Medi­cine (aver­age hours worked not provided)
Music $26.19 $23.54 $25.86 $25.74
Nurs­ing $21.27 - $28.77 $24.00
Phar­macy $17.48 - $31.27 $21.01
Sci­ence $21.68 - $26.86 $24.74
Vet Sci­ences $17.51 $18.15 $44.59 $22.53
Visual Arts $14.67 - $20.89 $18.59

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UNSW JD and new city campus

17 Sep 2009 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | 1 comment

The ads at the uni bus stop are hard to miss: UNSW now offers Juris Doc­tor for gradu­ates instead of LLB. What’s the dif­fer­ence? From what I can see, post­gradu­ates will be taught sep­ar­ately from under­gradu­ates, JD stu­dents can take Masters-​​level courses as elect­ives, and some of the courses might be taught at their new city cam­pus. Intriguing.

Speak­ing of which, I only just found out that UNSW had opened a city cam­pus on O’Connell Street, right in the heart of the fin­an­cial and legal dis­trict in Sydney. If you look at the pho­tos, a Sydney Uni law gradu­ate intim­ately famil­iar with the bowels of the old law school might be left just some­what envi­ous. Sydney Uni had bet­ter do some­thing soon, because UNSW has just taken away a point of com­pet­it­ive advant­age, our city location.

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Dan and I, back in third year, wrote up our Aus­tralian con­sti­tu­tional law case sum­mar­ies as Wiki­pe­dia art­icles as we were study­ing them: click here for a list of case sum­mar­ies. (We didn’t quite fin­ish though: the red links link to pages that don’t exist.)

01 Sep 2009 by Enoch Lau | No comments

“I now come to the Galapa­gos Islands Divi­sion of the law of torts, namely, defam­a­tion… The giant turtles of defam­a­tion have evolved their own dia­lect, arcane cus­toms and overly subtle dis­tinc­tions.” — Justice Ipp, “Themes In The Law Of Torts” (Speech, 16 March 2007)

26 Aug 2009 by Enoch Lau | 1 comment

Law revue review

26 Aug 2009 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | No comments

Last year, the Sydney Law Revue, I thought, deserved noth­ing but vit­riol (to the dis­may of one of the revue dir­ect­ors I happened to chance upon at a clerk­ship func­tion last year). This year, how­ever, the revue was much bet­ter and well deserving of praise: who could for­get the singing Taliban or the all-​​singing, all-​​dancing jury trial? The nud­ity was much abbre­vi­ated, how­ever, and most of the sing­ers are still impossible to under­stand. And that dis­ab­il­ity skit: what were they think­ing (given that Ron McCal­lum would have had to sit through that)? Any­way, a good per­form­ance with lots of tal­ent. Well done.

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Law puzzlers

25 Aug 2009 in Law by Enoch Lau | 2 comments

Here’s today’s light enter­tain­ment, cour­tesy of David Su, and extrac­ted from the latest edi­tion of The Gavel.

Identify the six hid­den legal terms:

Law puzzlers

Answers (high­light the rest of this line to see): affi­davit, pat­ent, brief, mens rea, suit, plaintiff

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On board the clerkship

05 Aug 2009 in Law, University by Enoch Lau | No comments

This art­icle was ori­gin­ally pre­pared for The Gavel, with Tommy Chen contributing.

A sum­mer clerk­ship. Many see it as a ticket to the job they’ve always wanted. Here are some tips that might help you along.

Apply­ing for a clerkship

Tip #1: Focus on around half a dozen firms. You might apply for slightly more or slightly less, but you must be the wager­ing kind if you only apply for one or two, and the weight of cock­tail nights and other events will kill you if you apply for a dozen or more (and you get them all). Qual­ity is bet­ter than quant­ity: spend time on each of your applic­a­tions instead of spread­ing out your time like pea­nut but­ter. If you think a large firm is for you, maybe pick one or two smal­ler ones (and vice versa): you might like what you see!

Tip #2: Don’t do it at the last minute. If you’re the kind who leaves your assign­ment till the last minute (like me!), be warned.

Tip #3: Make your applic­a­tion com­pel­ling. Per­son­al­ise each applic­a­tion for each firm, focus­ing on why that firm is the firm for you — even if you say that to every firm. Is there a reason why you’re apply­ing to them, apart from the fact that you’ve heard of their name before and you think they’re big? Com­mon dif­fer­ences between firms include the loc­a­tions in which they prac­tice and the areas of law they focus on. The law firm pro­files in the careers guides will often state selec­tion cri­teria, per­haps impli­citly; try and address each and every one of those cri­teria in your cover letter.

Tip #4: These are com­mer­cial law firms. Sure you might be attrac­ted to their pro bono prac­tices or their work-​​life bal­ance or what not, but don’t for­get you are apply­ing to a com­mer­cial law firm. These places do such inter­est­ing things as write con­tracts, sue other people who break those con­tracts and give advice at the whim of their cli­ents. So what attracts you to a com­mer­cial law firm? Is it the fact that you find a buzz from work­ing on Big Import­ant Deals with Big Import­ant Cli­ents? Or is it because you find the prac­tical aspect of the law compelling?

Tip #5: Reflect. In the inter­view, you may be asked to explain some­thing you’ve writ­ten on your CV. Noth­ing sells bet­ter than a coher­ent, com­pel­ling story that shows a bit of you and what skills you possess.

Tip #6: First impres­sions mat­ter. There’s no need to sculpt your hair like a work of art, but make sure you look neat, pro­fes­sional and awake.

Tip #7: Con­sult the CLSS Careers Guide. We wrote it just for you. Find it at www​.usydclss​.com/​C​a​r​e​e​r​s​_​G​u​i​d​e​_​2​009.

The offer

Con­grat­u­la­tions, you’ve got a couple of offers. How do you pick?

Tip #1: Keep ask­ing ques­tions. The food and drink are usu­ally good at cock­tail nights, but they’re there for you to ask lots of ques­tions. What kind of work will clerks be expec­ted to do? What kind of work is involved in that par­tic­u­lar area of law, as a law­yer or a part­ner even? As an example, I did com­puter sci­ence as my first degree: I had no idea what IT law­yers do, so I grilled away until I was sat­is­fied I under­stood what they did. Ask about some of the big mat­ters that they’ve worked on. Would you be inter­ested to take part in that? You might also want to ask about their train­ing, or over­seas oppor­tun­it­ies if that floats your boat, or you could per­haps even ask the law­yers what they like about their cur­rent firm.

Tip #2: The people. I’m sure every firm says they’re the best for “people” — but their sort of people might not be the kind of people you like to be around. So even if you have an offer from a Big Import­ant Firm with Big Import­ant Cli­ents, what good is that if you can’t stand the people at work? Can you strike a con­ver­sa­tion with them? Do you like them? You’ll also prob­ably see other stu­dents from the same uni­ver­sity as you: what does the selec­tion of can­did­ates tell you about the firm? You may also know some people in the year above you who did a clerk­ship in the last sum­mer: what did they think of the experience?

Enoch Lau was a 2008-​​09 sum­mer clerk at Blake Dawson. Tommy Chen is cur­rently a gradu­ate at UBS.

(Update: Tommy wrote a follow-​​up blog post on clerkships.)

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