SA’s top law firms will recruit more than 70 graduates next year

Commercial law firm HWL Ebsworth will take on eight graduates in its Adelaide office next year, as part of the firm’s biggest ever annual intake of university graduates nationally.

HWL Ebsworth partner Jamie Restas and graduate Stephanie Kolaczkos. Picture SIMON CROSS

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Commercial law firm HWL Ebsworth will take on eight graduates in its Adelaide office next year, as part of the firm’s biggest ever annual intake of university graduates nationally.

In total, the state’s biggest 25 law firms will take on approximately 73 graduates next year, with Lipman Karas expecting to recruit ten graduates and Minter Ellison, Thomson Geer and Cowell Clarke all expecting six new recruits.

HWL Ebsworth partner Jamie Restas says the firm’s “rigorous” recruitment process has become increasingly competitive in recent years.

“Every year we have hundreds of applications for summer clerks,” he said.

“Having young people enter the organisation, who are eager and keen and wanting to develop their careers, is a good thing for the internal dynamics and culture of a firm.

“It’s merit based - you’ve got to have good grades, to show academically that you’re smart, you need to have great social skills and show you have other interests - you need to have an all-round skill-set.”

According to Law Society figures, close to 600 law students graduate each year from the state’s three universities.

University of Adelaide dean of law Professor Melissa de Zwart says law graduates continue to be highly sought after by employers, including but not limited to law firms.

“A degree in law opens up a range of career options – legal practice is not the only employment outcome for lawyers, and our students are well aware of that,” she said.

“The Graduate Destination Survey shows that more than 85 per cent of our law students achieve full-time employment within four months of completing their degree, and 92 per cent are employed within five months of graduation.”

Thomson Geer chief executive partner Adrian Tembel says while there is no shortage of new graduates, “top talent is in short supply”.

“There’s some really interesting non-legal careers ahead for them (graduates) and we still have to work really hard to find talented law grads,” he said.

“We think it’s a very vibrant, complex and lucrative career but it’s not now automatic that young lawyers will say I’m naturally going to take that path.

“Our job is to explain and demonstrate that it is the right career path as opposed to a consulting career, a corporate career or a bureaucratic career.

“We need to keep making sure that the career path isn’t just potentially economically rewarding, but is also sufficiently complex and diverse and vibrant that people feel that they’re being challenged and growing as people.”

Minter Ellison SA/NT managing partner Adam Bannister says an increasingly complex legal market, influenced to a greater degree by technology, makes experience outside of law valuable in the marketplace.

“We look for graduate talent that has broad experience, not only from their law degree,” he said.

“Project management, technology, engineering - any other high level degree we look on favourably.”

HWL Ebsworth will introduce more than 100 graduates nationally next year.