Postgraduate law can lead to more than just a legal career

Getting qualified

“I got to the point where I had all this experience that I wanted to formalise so I could continue to be an asset to the organisation,” says Luisa, who was then head of marketing and communications for Envirolab Services, a privately owned environmental contamination laboratory.

During her search for a law degree, she discovered the UTS Juris Doctor. Unlike many of its competitors, the UTS course was designed with working professionals in mind.

“Part-time programs, a central location and having a JD program for postgraduate students where you could enrol in the evenings was really what I needed,” Luisa says.

Choosing the right subjects

Beyond equipping students with a fundamental understanding of the law, the course includes a wide range of elective subjects. Students can pick and choose their areas of study, tailoring the degree to their interests.

For Luisa, these interests included marketing, law and her work at Envirolab. She studied environmental law, advanced contracts, intellectual property law, and misleading and deceptive conduct — important legal areas that continue to shape her work.

Practical legal training

Once she’d finished her coursework, Luisa enrolled in Practical Legal Training, the last step in gaining admission to practise as a lawyer. She then used her law degree to negotiate a new role: head of marketing, communications and legal compliance.

Now my role has become more strategic, where I generate a lot of the marketing and communications work in partnership with the legal side,” she says.

“It’s quite a challenging workload, but it’s a great opportunity to be exposed to in-house legal work across a range of matters, from areas such as environmental law, employment law and anti-slavery obligations to commercial legal matters and occasionally litigation issues.

Luisa says she wants to keep building her proficiency in policy, particularly environmental matters. Thanks to her knowledge of corporate governance, she has also been appointed as a non-executive director at Koorana, a provider of child and family support services.