What was your route into the profession?
I enjoyed law school, and I was a pretty good law student when I put my mind to it. I got very distracted by student politics and government and didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what my career might be. I didn’t apply for summer clerkships or graduate law jobs at bigger firms. As I belatedly approached the end of my law degree, I looked at a wide range of work options involving politics, business, government, and consultancy. Eventually I fell into law because, frankly, no one else would take me.
I was very lucky to land at Slater & Gordon in Melbourne in the mid-1990s. It was an exciting time at the firm. There was a lot going on. The culture, the people and the work suited me, and I stayed for more than 20 years, after being offered a 12-month training contract. If you’d told my 25-year-old self I would still be in legal services more than 30 years later, he wouldn’t have believed it.
What has been your biggest career challenge so far?
There have been plenty. Slater & Gordon went through a very well publicised crisis starting in 2015, during which time I was leading the UK firm. That had its moments!
Which person within the legal profession inspires you most?
I’m not sure there is a single person in the profession who inspires me. I have been fortunate to work with lots of very talented, hardworking lawyers over the years and there is something inspiring in all of them. Equally, I’ve been very lucky during my career to become involved with many clients who inspired me by their courage, resilience, and determination. If anything, they are the folks who I have found most inspiring. It’s impossible to single any one of them out.
If you weren’t a lawyer, what would you choose as an alternate career?
When I started my legal career the most probable alternative path was politics, but to my late mother’s relief, I dodged that one. What interests me now is how organisations work and how people working together get things done, particularly to a consistently high level. That’s why I’m very privileged to occupy the role I do.
I’m also very keen on sports. If I had another professional life, I’d love to work in a professional sporting environment, ideally in a talent role. Depending on the sport, its general manager, or sporting director or something like that. I am fascinated by how high-performance sporting organisations assemble, motivate, and manage talent. There is something unique about professional sports in terms of the immediacy and brutality of the feedback participants receive in terms of the success of their strategy. It would be fascinating to be involved in that environment (although, I suspect, not especially nice or secure).
Who is your favourite fictional lawyer?
Probably because he’s in the news, I enjoyed Robert Duvall’s character in the Godfather movies, Tom Hagen; he got on with the job but apparently was not a wartime consigliere. However, my favorite movie lawyer was probably John Travolta as Jan Schlichtmann in A Civil Action. The film was based on a non-fiction book which charted Jan’s journey from successful personal injury lawyer to pretty-unsuccessful class action lawyer who was acting on behalf of a group of people impacted by water contamination in New England. It highlighted the challenge of those types of cases and the world of class action litigation. The story resonated with me, probably given what I was doing at the time.
What change would you make to the profession?
As someone who has been a member of the profession for about 30 years, I have a lot of respect for the legal profession and think it is often misunderstood and more than occasionally misrepresented. What some regard as quaint or anachronistic is often fundamental to the way of life we enjoy. I’m not sure there is anything I would fundamentally change about it. If anything, I think we need to constantly remind ourselves that we are ultimately in service of people and need to always put ourselves in the shoes of legal consumers and think about what we do from a consumer’s perspective. Sometimes, I think we adopt the point of view of the lawyer-professional too eagerly.
How do you relax?
The usual stuff—family, hobbies, travel, doing nothing.
Ken Fowlie, chairman of Stowe Family Law.
