How did you end up working in Alternative Legal Services?

A little bit by chance, it certainly wasn’t deliberate. Prior to working in Alternative Legal Services, I was a personal injury lawyer. So I spent about five years on the plaintiff-side doing quite intense work injury and litigation matters. I found litigation life quite intense, the hours were really long and personal injury work can be quite emotionally-taxing.

In 2019, I thought “I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore” or “what else is really out there for me, I really value my life and I want a work-life balance, how can I make that happen?” I heard about Alternative Legal Services and that they had this new technology-driven practice area that was a global offering. So the team works across the world, meaning that at 6pm, or whatever time that we stop working, we are able to pass on to the rest of the world and follow the sun. So you know, Perth can continue working, and Beijing can continue working and so on. So it truly is a role where I can leave work at work and have just ended up loving it and really being motivated by efficiencies and technology along the way and really now thought “you know I’ll stay here until I figure out what I wanna do.” But this is how I see my career playing out and it really is an area of law that is exploding and getting bigger.

Can you tell us a bit about the type of work you do in Alternative Legal Services?

It ranges depending on the types of matters that we’re working on but generally it’s quite project-based. Our teams are set-up with qualified staff, with lawyers and teams of legal analysts, who essentially undertake the review work. A classic kind of day for us, is we might receive some instructions from a client about a regulatory notice, for example ASIC, and ASIC want a whole lot of information for whatever reason. Essentially the client tasks us with finding that information within their databases, wherever that might exist, whether it’s in email, inboxes, or a drive somewhere. We then process that data into some legible way so it can be compared and read. We then use technology to reduce as much as possible how much human review is required. By comparing what documents are the same and what are conceptually similar. We know what the kind of concepts are so we use computer-assisted learning to teach concepts so the documents are either put into two baskets or ranked into: ‘what you might want to look at’ or ‘this is junk, don’t look at it’. What was previously a manual task and paralegals in a room just doing discovery and pouring over documents, is now automated as much as possible so our lawyers and our qualified staff and our legal analysts are only looking at what is actually adding value.

Do you think the job market in the legal industry will be impacted by the use of automated machines to remove manual work from the document-review process?

I don’t think so, I think no matter how much you can automate the law and any type of litigation in particular, I think there will always be a need for nuance and the need for human intervention and human analysis of the output of the machines, where I think there’s benefit beyond what machines can offer. I guess, yes you might say we aren’t hiring as many paralegals to do you know this meaningless task, which is pouring over documents. Instead, we’ve created an entire practice group that’s creating its own profit well-beyond and its own jobs within that. I think the benefit of really allowing lawyers to do the valuable work is much more important. I actually don’t think it has any impact on robots stealing our jobs or anything like that. 

What are some misconceptions about Alternative Legal Services?

I think that it’s not real lawyering or that it is kind of just the overflow, or that we’re just reviewing documents. I think that that is a huge misconception. The work that we do in harnessing technology, figuring out what is out there and what it can do for us, is more what my role is than reviewing documents. I think the opportunities for stopping and actually thinking about, “ok what is the best way to do this” is an opportunity that I’ve certainly had in Alternative Legal Services, that I don’t think I had in traditional law, where you’re often just expected to turn over your matters or turn over your cases just in the same way, cookie-cutter approach, “this is how we do it, this is how its always been done” and I think being in a role that is innovative by nature, allows just taking a strategic approach to what is usually quite a straightforward thing. But actually thinking outside-the-box to say “well, how can we do this better?” is the best kind of part of the Alternative Legal Services. When I first came into it, I didn’t think it would be such a big part. 

“I think being in a role that is innovative by nature, allows just taking a strategic approach to what is usually quite a straightforward thing. But actually thinking outside-the-box to say “well, how can we do this better?” is the best kind of part of the Alternative Legal Services.”

Do you think in the future, we’ll move away from traditional lawyering and move more into Alternative Legal Services?

I think they compliment each other quite well. So I think, you’ll certainly see more fims having their own similar offerings or consulting firms having expertise in this discovery kind of field and it being more of an expectation as well, that this is how it’s done. That will also come from the courts as well. A lot of the discovery protocols now consider this type of technology as being required and the costs of doing it any other way will be really questioned and scrutinised quite a lot. When courts know that it’s out there and your opposing solicitors know that it's there, if you’re saying it's going to cost us a million dollars because we have to review all these documents by hand or assess these claims, there will be a lot of scrutiny. There has to be a push, clients aren’t going to pay for it anymore and the efficiency of the legal system will hopefully push people to use that technology in the first instance.

If someone were to start working in Alternative Legal Services and wanted to move into traditional law, are there pathways for them to do that?

Yea, I think absolutely, it is, I think it is exceptionally grounding to move into a traditional maybe commercial disputes practice. Because if you have that mindset already of “how can I do this better” and have the knowledge of how to use the technology already and you know how it all works, and when you’re getting assistance from ALT, for example, you know exactly what they’re doing. That happens quite a lot even in our firm that we share resources or people go on secondments in disputes teams or end up working in disputes teams for whatever reason. They certainly complement each other because traditional litigation still has all of those aspects to it and it isn’t that far removed. You’re not losing, you’re still making legal decisions, you’re making tricky privileged calls on a confidentiality clause, and interpreting whether what a lawyer has put into an email is actually legal advice or not. The attention to detail and the skills that you build would well-place someone to move into litigation, they really complement each other well.

What has been the highlight of your career, is there a memorable case or particular matter that has really stood out?

I think a lot of my stand-out matters and things come from my time in personal injury which might not be as motivating for the ALT spiel I’ve just done. But anything that I’ve done that has made a genuine impact on someone’s life. I remember early in my career, the first ever big matter that I worked on was the Black Saturday bushfire class action and I worked on that for probably three years straight and that experience for me was kind of life-changing in my ability to talk to people, to understand or even try to understand the depth of people’s experiences when they’ve gone through a traumatic experience and then also have to follow that up in legal proceedings and a legal fight.

Getting to the end of that is always a positive thing, I just recall even just small wins of the calls, when you call the client to say “Hey, we’ve won it’s all over”, those are the moments I think that were the most defining in my career and that have kept me going. But now I channel that into my people management, in that I am really invested in the young lawyers that I work with achieving their goals and helping them to achieve that. I think that that’s a really unique part of the ALT role and something that I hope to keep doing to champion up others.

How do you maintain your work-life balance and if you’re dealing with a particularly emotional case, how do you process your emotions?

I think for a long-time I didn’t really do anything and I was completely consumed by work and I don’t think I knew what the term ‘vicarious trauma’ or what those things meant or what kind of impact, even though these things were happening to me. But hearing stories day-in-day-out and having people scream at you day-in-day-out takes a toll. I think for me, eventually setting those boundaries really clearly, not only with my work, but with my clients on what I will and will not accept, I think is very helpful. It’s hard to just say alright I’ll just leave it at work or I won’t have my emails at my phone, but if you haven’t set it out that clearly “I’m not going to answer the phone after 6pm” or “I’m not online tonight” and say “These are my boundaries'', then I think you set yourself up a little bit to kind of be expected to be available all the time.

“Hearing stories day-in-day-out and having people scream at you day-in-day-out takes a toll. I think for me, eventually setting those boundaries really clearly, not only with my work, but with my clients on what I will and will not accept, I think is very helpful”

I certainly got into that trap, so I think catching yourself before you burn out is a big-thing. So, exercise, actually taking - you know I’m not a lunch-eater so I don’t go out of the office at 1pm, but at least taking a break, going and separating, because it’s not only beneficial for yourself it’s beneficial for your work, because at some point your brain just can’t do it anymore. Just accepting, “I’m actually not doing anything helpful at midnight, so I’m going to sleep”, so just setting those boundaries and respecting them yourself as well. Even if it is easier to jump on a call at whatever time, saying no, I may not be busy but this is my ‘sit on the couch time’ and my ‘not think about work time’.

What would your advice be for students who have kind of built up that expectation that their employers are going to expect them to be available and they are worried that if they set those boundaries in place it might affect the way that their work performance is viewed?

Of course, I certainly don’t suggest going in on your first day and being like “do not email me after 5pm”, but I think it’s something that I’ve learnt should be and is at the forefront of my mind when I am job-seeking and asking that question. Some people might be willing to do that and put their head down and work and leave work. But for someone who isn’t, I think being honest about that or at least asking the question about what the culture of the firm is or the culture of the workplace that you're entering is, is really important. Because at the end of the day, no matter what boundaries you do set for yourself in those situations, if every single person at the firm works stupid hours and the culture is just generally very chaotic and people just don’t get stuff done until whenever and you are expected to be around, just thinking a bit more critically about that, “is that somewhere I wanna work?’.

But once you're in it, not being afraid to have those conversations, I would be very surprised if the state of more of the legal industry and the way that we’re working towards flexible working, that any employer would not be willing to have that kind of conversation. So, not so much advice, but I think just allow yourself to. If that’s a priority for you and that’s something that you value, then absolutely make sure that you stick to that. There’s a lot of times where I would volunteer for a lot of the overtime and things just because I thought that I have to be the one who works the hardest, but at the end of the day that’s not really a measure of the value you’re adding.

At times, I’ve been criticised for working late or working too hard, or not too hard, but a question can also be asked “why can’t you get this done in your day job? Why are you still here, are you slow? Is there something we can assist with?”. It’s also a bit double-edged like that, you don’t want to kinda just be around for the sake of being around. But I think the law is heading more towards agile working and home and office and being around when you need to be around and adding value where you're needed. I hope the days of having to stay until the partner leaves are somewhat behind us.

Do you think the law industry has been moving towards a better overall work-life culture, especially with the impact of covid?

Absolutely! Yea, I think most of the top law firms that have the resources are putting in the effort from a flexibility perspective to make sure that people who have experienced this flexibility over the last two years can continue to do so, but in a way that you get the best of both worlds with collaboration and having people. But I think people’s understanding of what is actually valuable about us meeting in person has changed. It’s about the collaboration and the group-thought but when we are just doing quick catch-ups, or we don’t have meetings, then it’s better to be at home, it’s more efficient to be at home. I think the understanding and the appreciation or just the trust that people will do their work when they are at home has improved. I think that there was such a misconception that anyone who worked at home was just a mother who had kids or for whatever reason, But now it’s everyone and I think that’s a big culture shift that’s happening at the moment.