The security situation is intense: Life as a lawyer in South Africa

DLA Piper senior associate Olivia Clark never expected to work in a commercial law firm.

“I was one of those really insufferable people who would say, whenever people were applying for grad jobs at big firms, ‘how could you go and work at those places, they’re reinforcing capitalist structures’ … Now I work at one.”

But the London-based lawyer isn’t quite wheeling and dealing in the mergers and acquisitions team. Instead, she is on secondment from her role in DLA Piper’s pro bono team, currently working with the UNHCR in South Africa, before heading to the organisation’s headquarters in Geneva.

Clark arrived in October to spend nine months in the UNHCR’s regional office in Pretoria, which covers 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Projects on the secondment range from using digital innovation to improve access to justice for stateless people, and designing projects on climate displacement.

Clark, who spent time in the Attorney-General’s Department after university, says that UNHCR work culture is similar to that of the public service, with more of an emphasis on hierarchy and respectable working hours, in contrast to the flat teams enhanced for billable targets seen in corporate firms.

Life in South Africa

Daily life is a far cry from the routine of a London corporate lawyer. “The security situation is pretty intense in Johannesburg … I’m living in a site with a very high fence and a lot of security. You can’t walk anywhere, and if you’re driving in a particular area at night you can’t stop at traffic lights,” Clarke says.

Despite the different circumstances – load shedding has caused many logistical difficulties – Johannesburg is “an amazing, thriving city”, says Clark.

“It’s one of the most culturally exciting cities I’ve lived in. It has an amazing food and art scene, so I’m really enjoying it.”

“It’s kind of felt like being back in Australia because the food is delicious and the weather is so good,” Clark says.

Pro bono work

Clarke says that DLA Piper, with its team of 30 full time pro bono lawyers, is an example of a firm that has invested in its pro bono practice, which, beyond its inherent worth, is becoming a commercial imperative for many firms.

“Commercial lawyers are seconded to clients all the time, and it’s the same for us,” says Clark, who joined DLA Piper after meeting practice head and pro bono “celebrity” Nicholas Patrick while completing a thesis on the inaccessibility of justice for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

“All of our big clients, when we are pitching for work, one of their biggest questions is: what are your ESG and human rights commitments, and how can you engage your lawyers in that?

“If firms don’t have that capacity, they are really missing out on working strategically with their clients … [pro bono] is now a big value-add for clients,” says Clark.

When Naomi Creighton went to Paris for a company training session, she didn’t expect to stay.

But that’s exactly what happened. In 2017, the then 31-year-old in-house counsel travelled to France at the behest of her employer, waste and environmental management company Veolia.

Creighton had planned to slip in a trip to the office and meet people who worked in the legal department whom she had never seen in person before. It was at that casual catch-up that she found out the French legal team were down a few lawyers.

“He sort of jokingly said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a job, would you?’ And I was like, actually, why not?” she says, referring to the man who is now her boss.

Now she reviews mergers and acquisitions and worldwide infrastructure projects from an office just outside the ring road that surrounds the inner city. It allows her to live in a flat in the very centre of Paris.

Creighton did not have to retrain in French law to work in-house, and nor do other foreign legal consultants. However, anyone wishing to appear in court would need to pass French Bar exams and pay a registration fee.

Creighton found that in-house French salaries are lower on average than what Australians receive, but smart negotiations can land you a salary on par with Australia. Contract negotiation took her several months because she pressed hard. “There was an expectation that I needed to be worth it,” she says.

She says that lawyers at a junior level would not notice too much of a salary difference, but the gap grows with seniority, unless you are a savvy negotiator.

The lower cost of living in France also makes any salary difference less noticeable. She and her colleagues don’t pay more than €3.70 ($6.05) per hour for crèche (daycare) and she describes the quality of childcare as “excellent”. Local wines are also affordable and great quality.

But it is the French workplace and social culture that really sweetens the deal.

Creighton says that French offices are much more collaborative than anything she experienced in Australia. While Australians may work as part of a team, she found that the French industry culture includes more time for meetings and direct collaboration with colleagues.

One of the greatest perks of working in France is the hours. The standard workweek is 35 hours, and people working in France have a legal right to disconnect outside that time. There is also more time off. Creighton says it is normal to receive seven or eight weeks off a year with a “use it or lose it” policy.

“The country shuts down in August.” says Creighton. “People take at least four weeks’ leave and nothing gets done. So everyone just goes away and enjoys a really nice summer holiday.”

Lunchtime is also sacred, and everyone takes at least a full hour to eat and socialise. The French also frequently conduct business during this time.

Though she practises in English, Creighton had to learn to speak French to have a social life in Paris. She came over with no knowledge of the language and says it was a steep learning curve. She is enthusiastic about her children growing up fully immersed in a bilingual environment.

Travel is also a huge part of the lifestyle for her. Due to the ease of travel in the European Union, she and her colleagues often take a weekend trip to Italy, Spain, or even the Faroe Islands, which are part of Denmark.

She also enjoys a staycation visiting the various wine regions of France.

Are you an Australian lawyer overseas? If you’d like to share your story, email explainers@afr.com

In the legal world, where billable targets and long hours are generally part of the job, working part-time for a prestigious law firm to pursue a passion for painting is certainly unconventional.

But, that’s the life of London-based painter and IP lawyer George McCubbin.

“I mostly do pharmaceutical litigation, and a lot of my paintings have a strangely scientific leaning to them, so there’s definitely crossover between the two,” he says.

Australian artists, like lawyers, have established a well-trodden path to London in search of mid-career inspiration, travelling opportunities, and the lure of bigger markets.

But, for McCubbin, a senior associate at Herbert Smith Freehills, the reasoning was more prosaic: “A friend hit me up and said there was a position available … I thought my chance to do the overseas thing had gone, but it was a good opportunity so I took it,” he says.

McCubbin lives in Angel, in the inner-city borough of Islington, with a fellow Australian working in banking – not quite an artists’ commune.

Working in Melbourne before the move, McCubbin was able to negotiate working part-time, while pursuing an art career on the side. He was able to do the same in London, without causing a fuss, working four days per week at Freehills.

“If you feel like you’re missing something in your day-to-day work it’s tough to find out what that is if you’re working full time … You need to give yourself time and space to figure out if there are other things you want to do,” he says.

Despite the reputation of large firms for extreme hours and unsustainable billable targets, McCubbin says he has never had an issue with working part-time, despite moving between Ashurst, MinterEllison and Herbert Smith Freehills in the past decade, and he believes flexibility to pursue outside passions is becoming more accepted since the pandemic.

Art and IP

McCubbin believes that corporate law and art are more similar than many people may think. “[Painting] is about focusing on a problem for a really long time and trying to figure out a solution … that kind of reminds me of what I do on a day to day as well,” he says.

McCubbin sees art as an addition to his legal career, rather than an escape from its strictures, citing the inspiration of IP litigation, the inherent creativity of lawyers, and the support of his firm. Indeed, Freehills recently held an exhibition of the works of more than twenty in-house lawyers.

While the move to London may not have boosted McCubbin’s bank account – pay is similar to Australia once the cost of living is factored in – it has paid off in artistic revelation, prompting an evolution from his Australian style.

“In Melbourne, we’ve got a really strong street art culture, so I did a lot of stencil work back home. But then in London, you have the influence of the old masters around, so I’ve found myself working on a bunch of landscapes recently, which I never thought I would do,” he says.

McCubbin’s corporate background is by no means a disadvantage in London’s art world. Indeed, the IP lawyer says that it’s a more considerate locale for outsider artists.

“[Art] is big business in the UK, so it feels more corporate, whereas in Australia, sometimes being an artist-lawyer felt a bit more disparate. There is more of a connection between [art and law] in the UK because of that stronger corporate side.”

In 2011, then 26-year-old Siba Diqer was working as an associate in Brisbane, but dreaming of far-off lands.

She was advised by a colleague to seek her overseas experience before she got promoted to senior associate.

The aftershocks of the GFC made it hard to find work overseas. One recruiter even told her not to bother. However, a helpful friend in Amsterdam connected her with colleagues at Allen & Overy in London, which kicked off a chain of referrals that culminated in an “intense” interview for a job in Frankfurt.

During the interview, a partner fired off a series of legal scenarios, one after the other, asking her to advise on them.

Diqer landed the job with Allen & Overy and moved to Germany, where she says the legal industry culture is vigorous, hours are long, and “nobody was going to hold her hand”.

“I asked my partner what my billable targets were, and he laughed and said, ‘It doesn’t matter, you’ll meet them.’”

However, the long hours and hard work translated into “quite the pay bump”.

Recruitment firm Marsden says German lawyers often receive between €90,000 and €125,000 ($149,227 and $207,260) with three to four years’ post-qualified experience, and 18 top firms even offer starting salaries of €150,000 or more ($248,715).

Being a lawyer also comes with a high prestige factor in Germany, according to Diqer, which even made it easier for her to rent an apartment. She says Australians in particular also enjoy a reputation for being very hardworking in the industry.

There was an element of culture shock in her new workplace. Diqer initially found German directness off-putting, before she realised that straight translations from the German language omit most English niceties.

Now she appreciates it: “I love that you always know where you stand with Germans.”

Diqer ended up acting as a cultural translator between her German colleagues and the London office. The polite formality of English communication often proved confusing for her candid colleagues.

“Germans would come into my office with a printed-out email, and they’re like, ‘Siba, what is this person saying?’” she says, “And I’d explain what they needed, and they’re like, ‘why didn’t they just say that?’”

Lifelong impact

Diqer spent three years in Frankfurt. When she came back to Australia, the firm she worked at didn’t count her experience in Germany when calculating her seniority level, which surprised her. However, she still feels that her time overseas was well spent for both her personal and professional development, and set her up excellently for her present work managing litigation funding in Melbourne.

“It 100 per cent made me a better lawyer,” she says. “If I’d stayed [in Brisbane], I’d probably be a partner. But I still think I’d do it again.”

Her time overseas has given her a lifelong tie to German culture. She says she makes time every year to go to German Christmas markets and attends German film festivals whenever she can. She also brought home a passion for European soccer leagues and baking her own bread, and her husband brews his own beer to match the flavours of German ones.

Diqer says that her time abroad gave her a confidence she wouldn’t otherwise have.

“Now, whenever I get a challenge or an opportunity that is scary and I feel like I’m out of my depth, I just remind myself that I moved to a country where I didn’t know anyone or speak the language and worked in areas I’d never come across,” she says. “And if I can manage that, I can manage this.”

But the best part of coming home?

“Good coffee. They didn’t have good coffee.”

Are you an Australian lawyer overseas? If you’d like to share your story, email explainers@afr.com

Matthew Yee had several opportunities to follow the conventional path and move to London to practise at a major firm, but his interest in the future of tech drew him elsewhere.

At age 28, he left a job at Minter Ellison in Sydney to work for Clifford Chance in Singapore, before jumping into the thriving Singapore startup space.

He now works as a registered foreign lawyer for Stripe, a digital payments company (valued earlier this year at $55 billion), supporting the in-person payments team. He helps manage risk and regulations with tech developers and a global legal team as the product develops.

When Yee was getting into tech law, perceptions were still shifting. “It was never viewed as the traditional go-to. People have always viewed M&A or disputes as where you want to be,” he says.

But he enjoys working in the tech field, which he says has “a bit more flexibility”.

As for Singapore, he sees it as “very cosmopolitan”, with a thriving expat community that still manages to leave room for locals.

The travel opportunities are a major draw as well.

“I can get on a plane and be in Bali in two hours, or go to Japan to meet a stakeholder in hours,” he says.

From firm work to fintech

Yee feels his background as a lawyer at major Australian firms was the best preparation for working at a startup company.

“It teaches you technical skills, it teaches you discipline, it teaches how to manage commercial stakeholders,” he says. “I think when you enter a tech environment it can be very, very messy. And I think you need to have a good footing in the fundamentals.”

He credits his time at Clifford Chance as setting him up for success in his current role, allowing him to get a grasp on the framework of Singapore law without having to formally retrain.

Working in tech in Singapore offers salaries comparable to the US Bay Area and London, he says. The low income tax rate also means he takes more of that money home than people in London or California.

The high pay does come with long hours. Yee often starts work at 7.30am to speak to stakeholders in the US, and the days can run very late. He manages by taking time for himself in the middle of the day – when international colleagues are asleep – to go to the gym or take a long lunch.

Renting is expensive in Singapore, and some things that are common in Australia are considered luxuries. Cars run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and driving is highly regulated to deter congestion.

However, Yee still feels Singapore is becoming more and more popular with Australians.

“I’d say there are Australians everywhere here,” says Yee. “They realise it’s fantastic for travel. It’s fantastic for career opportunities, the low tax, it’s all kind of like ‘tick, tick, tick’ for them.”

The networking-oriented expat culture has plenty of social groups for people interested in tech and investing.

He encourages like-minded lawyers to consider Singapore over London or New York.

“I think it’s been a fantastic journey,” he says. “I don’t think I would have had the same opportunities if I stayed in private practice in Sydney.”

In 2018, Tessa Dignam was trying to work out where to go next when a friend’s destination 30th birthday party brought her to Kenya. She fell in love with the country and made plans to move there as soon as she could.

Originally from Adelaide, Dignam studied on the Gold Coast, then got a job in Brisbane before moving to Canberra. Then she began looking for opportunities outside the country.

She got her first taste working overseas after spending a few years at international firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner in Abu Dhabi, in their infrastructure team.

Then, when Dignam moved to Nairobi, she got a job working for Iseme Kamau and Maema Advocates, a DLA Piper member firm, before moving to her current role, an in-house legal counsel at CrossBoundary, which co-ordinates investment in sustainable energy and infrastructure in Africa and the Middle East.

Her co-workers are mostly Kenyans, but there are a few expats as well.

It isn’t easy for foreign lawyers to get jobs in Kenya, which is very protective of its legal fraternity, Dignam says, adding that admission to practise Kenyan law requires naturalisation and fluency in the local language, Swahili. But Dignam works as a legal consultant, instead of an advocate, which has less stringent requirements. In her role she drafts contracts and assists in managing capital.

“I wasn’t really a finance lawyer before I moved to Kenya. And now I live and breathe capital.”

Some of her favourite projects have involved connecting rare-earths mines, which previously ran on coal, with renewable power.

“Suddenly, these mines are operating on 60 to 70 or 80 per cent renewable energy, which is amazing,” she says, “It’s a big change and Australia’s not even doing that yet.”

The trade-off between salary and lifestyle

Dignam has observed that you can find comparable salaries to what you would expect in Australia if you know where to look, especially with the high esteem placed on Western legal education. However, by and large, pay is not as high, and people are expected to work hard.

“I’ve probably worked harder here than I ever have. Not begrudgingly, I really love my job,” she says.

But Dignam and others find themselves choosing to take a pay cut for the lifestyle and culture of Kenya. She says she and her friends see life in Kenya as a perpetual adventure and have even spent the odd weekend casually going on safari. It’s perhaps not what the locals would do, but as a foreigner, she never stops being amazed by seeing a lion in the flesh, Dignam says.

Kenya’s place on the equator also means the weather is “beautiful” all year round.

Furthermore, the cost of living in Nairobi is notably lower than in major cities in Australia. “A bunch of coriander, the last time I was in Coles, was about $4.50,” she says, “Here I can get a bunch as thick as my arm for about 30¢.”

There is also a large industry for convenience delivery. “You can run your life from your WhatsApp. You can order groceries and have them delivered within an hour and there’s no $7.95 Australian postage,” Dignam says. “I couldn’t live this lifestyle anywhere else.”

She sees herself in Kenya for the long haul.

“Every day, we get to solve a really hard, scary problem with a lot of cool people in an amazing place. And I think that’s quite special.”

When Maxwell Behan was eight years old, he went on a family trip to Myanmar – and the travel bug stuck.

“I was brought here [in 2004], with my family. My dad’s always been a bit of an adventurer, and it sparked my interest in the region,” he says. The trip sparked a lifelong fascination with South-East Asia, and earlier this year, aged 27, he quit his job at HWL Ebsworth in Sydney to move to Yangon.

After undergoing six interviews over a month, he landed a job as an associate at South-East-Asian firm VDB Loi.

He is currently working on major international deals throughout Asia, including Bangladesh, with foreign companies in transport, energy and infrastructure sectors.

Behan says that being a native English speaker is an advantage in the South-East-Asian market. It often puts him at the forefront of deals he wouldn’t see at a junior level in Australia.

“You’re where the buck stops. You grow up a lot in a place like this because of the responsibility you have to take on,” he says.

The complex financial dynamics at play in the area are also a draw for him.

“[Myanmar] is going through both boom and turmoil at the same time. Between 2010, to around 2021, there was a huge foreign investment boom here. There are a lot of buildings that were built during that time, plus telecommunications, technology, etc.”

He plans to stay there long term and hopes to one day be the “go-to guy for deals in this region.”

Salary and perks

Behan makes more money working in Myanmar than he did at a major firm in Sydney. He says lawyers often make between $115,000 and $130,000 with two years’ post-qualification experience (PQE).

In addition to making more, he spends less. He doesn’t often cook or drive anymore because breakfast, lunch, dinner, as well as an Uber to and from work cost only $15 per day.

His firm also pays for his accommodation and a cleaning service. He lives in an apartment with a rooftop balcony.

Myanmar is usually in the news for its ongoing civil war, but Behan says he has had little exposure to it. Behan says the conflict is contained far away from the capital city.

(In 2021, the military staged a coup against the democratically elected civil government plunging the country into a political, economic and humanitarian crisis. Since then, it has carried out a violent crackdown on millions of people opposed to its rule. Western countries have sanctioned the junta and its businesses and many foreign firms have cut ties with the country.)

Industry culture

The laws and legal culture are influenced by regional traditions and culture. Though Behan’s field – foreign investment and project finance –is less affected, he has noticed that laws governing contracts often use archaic terms and refer to Buddhist monks and traditions.

For him, the country’s charm lies in its history and culture. There are large swaths of untouched nature, and the city’s architecture is historical, much of it left over from the British colonial era. People in the streets still wear traditional makeup and donate to monks on the side of the road.

Lunchtime is one of the most important rituals in his office. Instead of eating alone at his desk, no matter how busy things get, Behan and his colleagues all migrate to the tables when the clock strikes 12.

“They all share each other’s food,” says Behan. “You actively pick from other people’s boxes of these little dishes that they’ve all prepared. And they love to share with each other.”

Food is friendship in Yangon. “Instead of asking ‘how are you?’ they’ll ask ‘have you eaten?’” says Behan.

The Yangon lawyers also swap out the sacred Sydney coffee run for a trip to the tea shop for Burmese black tea, which is served strong and sweet with condensed milk.

Travel and nightlife

Behan is also excited to explore the local travel opportunities. It’s only a 45-minute flight from Yangon to Bangkok, and only about $100 per trip on the local airlines.

The office typically clears out between 5.30 and 6pm, but the nightlife has a unique local twist. There is a military curfew in place from midnight to 3am, and many places shut their doors at 10 or 11pm. But the committed party people of Yangon have found a way around it.

“What they do is if they’re at a bar or nightclub when the curfew comes, they’ll stay inside the bar or nightclub until 3 or 4am, and then go home,” says Behan. “It’s pretty wild.”

Are you an Australian lawyer overseas? If you’d like to share your story, email explainers@afr.com

Big cars and big highways made Australian lawyer Stefanie Szabo feel at home when she moved with her family from Dubai to Houston earlier this year.

Szabo, who works in-house at Norwegian multinational DNV, says that she had never previously considered the US as a viable option for an Australian lawyer.

“The impression I had was that it was hard to move across unless you had qualified and registered in a specific state.”

However, a Texas scheme whereby in-house lawyers can work for two years before needing to qualify locally is making the Lone Star State an increasingly attractive destination for foreign lawyers, drawn by the large number of tech and resources companies based in Austin and Houston respectively.

Dubai over London

When Szabo saw colleagues beginning to lock themselves into the senior associate pathway and out of career flexibility, she figured it was the right time to head overseas. “They would say, we can’t really move firms now, we’re about to be promoted.”

Szabo left MinterEllison’s Brisbane office in 2012, at age 28, but eschewed the well-trodden path to London. With the overseas legal market “not particularly buoyant” post-GFC and “not really screaming out for Aussie lawyers”, Szabo jumped at the opportunity to head to Dubai with leading international firm Clifford Chance.

After four years at the firm, with the long work hours and hectic travel schedule that came with international litigation, Szabo made the move in-house. But, with her role at DNV in Dubai covering everywhere from Cairo to Canberra, the transition was far from a step down in intensity.

“There’s a different kind of pressure. You’re no longer a baby lawyer working under a senior associate or partner, you’re the legal. You’re expected to hit the ground running, know the business and advise them differently to how you would have done in private practice,” Szabo says.

Houston life

Szabo’s new role, covering the Americas, makes for a slightly more manageable and logical geographic purview. “It’s completely different, and it’s an interesting professional opportunity,” she says.

“But I haven’t been able to make any trips to Brazil or somewhere cool like that just yet.”

Houston’s spread-out nature – “it’s just massive” – means that the expat community presents itself less readily than in Dubai, where “people come from anywhere”, Szabo says.

“We [foreign lawyers] are dotted all around the city depending on where your corporate HQ is located. But there are a lot of people who come here because of all the large multinational companies.”

Everything, except the expat community, is bigger in Texas. “The square footage on the homes is massive,” Szabo says. “We’re rattling around in our home.” Because of its spread-out, suburban nature, it is harder to naturally stumble across entertainment options and things to do with her young family.

“But I’m still new! I don’t want the people of Houston to cancel me – I’m sure it’s there, I just haven’t found it yet.

“People are very friendly, and that southern-style hospitality really does exist,” Szabo says.

Work, work, work

The most notable difference in legal culture, Szabo says, has been the reluctance of American lawyers at local firms and companies to take holidays.

“They take the shortest holidays. Being at a European company and coming from the Middle East – where they both really respect the summer break – American lawyers feel like they have to really justify taking seven to 10 days off.”

Fewer holidays doesn’t translate into fewer working hours either, which are comparable to Australia and the Middle East.

Spending all that time in the office, it’s not surprising then that Australian lawyers are highly regarded by Americans. “Aussies are seen as easy-going and good to get along with. And often they just like to hear an Australian accent,” says Szabo.

As for pay, the weak Australian dollar is a definite advantage. A good salary for a mid-level in-house legal counsel averages between $US150,000-$US180,000 ($235,000-$280,000), and can vary depending on the size of the company.

In the cut-throat world of New York City commercial law, Sydneysider Nick Saady finds himself acting as a “shoulder to lean on” for clients one minute, and alongside them in Vegas the next.

Saady is an associate at Pryor Cashman, a mid-sized media and entertainment law firm. He advises an eclectic group of clients, who include Hollywood stars, DJs, record-label bigwigs and sports leagues. In his spare time, he plays for the New York Kookaburras Cricket Club.

All of that leaves him with an average of three to four hours’ sleep, and an office he describes as his sometime living quarters.

Hustling to get in the door

Saady moved to New York five years ago, after two years at Freehills, to study a Master of Laws at New York University. “I was like, this is amazing … I need to try and get a job here so I can stay and build a career here,” he says.

He focused on building a network while studying, describing it as “almost impossible” to get a litigation job in New York without local qualifications or experience – “unless you’re doing something where they just need warm bodies”.

“I had to hustle pretty hard just to get in the interview room,” Saady says, recalling how he sent more than 50 emails to make connections in the city.

He eventually secured an interview with leading white-shoe firm Davis Polk, and was promptly put through the wringer. The process consisted of six interviews with partners and associates on the same day. “It was intense,” he says. But with a job offer within the day, and the Bar exam passed courtesy of a 27-day lock-in, Saady was off.

A cut-throat legal culture

Saady says working in New York is “incredibly different” to Australia. “It’s incredibly highly charged, and everyone is ridiculously aggressive … Everything is high stakes, and there’s constant pressure.”

He moved from Davis Polk to Pryor Cashman to work in the entertainment industry, and says the nature of his client base raises the stakes of his work.

“Because you’re representing celebs, artists and record labels, everything is public. So if there’s an issue or a misstep, you have a big problem.”

Clients also expect more of their lawyers in the United States, says Saady. Whereas engaging a lawyer is seen as a last port of call in Australian business, American clients expect round-the-clock availability.

“I’ll have clients ring me up just to talk about commercial matters,” he says. “There’s that closeness because you are like a sounding board for them. A guide.”

Saady found himself taking on a more business-focused role, acting as a “shoulder to lean on”, and he has learnt to move beyond plain legal advice and approach client matters from a commercial and reputational standpoint.

Partner pay and Vegas trips

With great client expectations comes great pay. Saady says his salary increased five-fold when he landed the job at Davis Polk, and was earning as much as many junior partners in top-tier Australian firms as a third-year associate in New York.

That’s reflected in the hours put in, with all-nighters far from rare. The omnipresence of the client has crept into his social life – he has an “eclectic social circle” with various music, hospitality and Hollywood connections.

“There’s an immersion of social life with work, especially when you’re in the entertainment industry. Everyone’s having a good time – most of the time.”

While time off work is hard to come by – “when you have clients, you can’t just leave” – Saady plans to travel to Ibiza and Mykonos with clients next year, and his work regularly takes him to Las Vegas.

As for what happens in Vegas? That’s client-lawyer privilege.

It was a plan to “spend a year learning Italian, eating food and living by the sea” that led Maggie Abou-Rizk from a career in competition law to criss-crossing the globe leading investigations for UNICEF from Budapest.

Having caught the travel bug when working in London for a year during the GFC – “the most horrible time to be trying to find a job” – Abou-Rizk found herself back in Australia working on telecommunications regulation.

“At the back of my mind, I really wanted to be overseas,” she tells The Australian Financial Review. Aged 30, and with many countries having a cut-off of 31 for working holiday visas, Abou-Rizk decided to move to Italy on little more than a whim.

“Italy’s kind of cool, I’m going to move there,” she decided, with little knowledge of the language and no job lined up. “Everyone told me that was a horrible idea.”

With three UN agencies headquartered in Rome, and a childhood interest in the organisation, Abou-Rizk sent out applications for a year while “teaching English and eating pasta”.

With less than a month before her visa ran out, a job offer finally materialised.

Thrown in the deep end

Despite being thrown into a “totally different” area of law and panicking about whether she could do the job, Abou-Rizk says the skills she learnt in corporate roles in Australia were transferable to United Nations work.

Legislation, procedures and jurisprudence are different, but the basic process of gathering evidence, looking at jurisprudence and preparing arguments that support the client’s position remain the same, she says.

Abou-Rizk began in administrative international law, but soon moved into investigations, inquiring into alleged misconduct and fraud by UNICEF employees and partners.

Most lawyers who have moved into the UN come from prosecution backgrounds, and corporate experience is “not common”, she says. Her experience in an investigative role at the ACCC and an understanding of contract principles gave “a level of insight that you might not have if you come from a prosecution background”.

‘Places you wouldn’t go for a holiday’

Working for the UN necessarily requires a lot of travel, and it remains “one of the things I find most enjoyable”, Abou-Rizk says.

Investigations have taken her to places including Syria, Sudan, Chad and Nigeria. “Basically, places you wouldn’t normally be going for a holiday, which presents its own challenges. But you really do get to see a different side of the world.”

Working in difficult environments on often sensitive matters requires an appreciation of local norms, and a sensitivity to risk, “to ensure that you’re not putting anyone in harm’s way while you’re conducting an investigation”. That can be one of the most challenging aspects of the job, Abou-Rizk says.

“When I was doing investigations at the ACCC … those weren’t factors you had to take into account.”

Despite the challenges, there are rewards: “Going out into the field and seeing the impact of the work [UNICEF does] is the sort of thing that keeps me motivated.

“Probably the most impactful time was going to Syria during the war. It puts things into perspective when you see the resilience of people and their determination to keep working and keep working for the UN with everything that is going on around them.”

Travel for fun

While work travel can be intense, working as a lawyer at the UN has its own advantages: normal working hours (most of the time), colleagues from all parts of the globe, and – being based in Europe – the ability to “jump on a plane on the weekend and have a great time somewhere else for not a lot of money”.

Indeed, the size of the organisation lends itself to mobility: in a 10-year career, Abou-Rizk has worked out of Rome, Geneva, Vienna and Budapest across various agencies.

As for pay, “it’s not a job that I do for the cash”.

“But there are many benefits to the work that [UNICEF] does that I find extremely rewarding. I don’t think there could be a stronger mandate than helping kids in need. That’s why I’m doing this job.”