Herbert Smith Freehills
Melbourne Graduate Program (Feb 2025)
Melbourne
Opportunity expired
Opportunity details
- Graduate Job or Program
- AUD 100,000 - 100,001 / Year
- 1-6 vacancies
- Apply by 25 Sep 2024
- Start date 15 Feb 2025
Discovering the perfect match for your aspirations is crucial when embarking on your legal journey. The Herbert Smith Freehills graduate program offers an unparalleled opportunity to kick-start and propel your career forward, with a global leader in law. You'll experience close mentorship, direct client interaction, and the opportunity to contribute to real-world projects, cases, and deals.
What we can offer
Our program is designed to help hone your skills as you dive into diverse and complex matters that are both challenging and rewarding across a range of practice areas, providing you with broad-based training and ensuring that you are ready to become a qualified solicitor.
As a rotating graduate, you’ll rotate through three distinct practice areas for six months each and will be assigned a partner and buddy for support.
We support graduates on their pathway to becoming solicitors by providing Practical Legal Training (PLT) and support through the admission process.
Once admitted, our graduates will begin the second stage of their formal learning program – Advance. This program focused on the client, financial and people skills needed to take you to the next step of your career.
What we’re looking for
At Herbert Smith Freehills, we believe that exceptional graduates possess both technical excellence and a growth mindset.
We value individuals who bring their best, are curious and who constantly seek to learn and improve from every experience. These graduates embrace challenges, viewing them not as obstacles but as opportunities to stretch their capabilities and achieve outstanding results.
We're looking for people who are proactive, demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to make a real impact, fostering strong relationships with clients and colleagues across our global network.
Our inclusive culture
At Herbert Smith Freehills, we strive to foster a diverse, innovative culture where high performance, client focus, and highly engaged individuals set us apart. We celebrate the uniqueness of our people. Our firm comprises individuals with a range of experiences and backgrounds. We strive to ensure that our inclusive environment empowers our people to be their authentic selves at work, feeling valued and able to perform at their best. We understand that our future success hinges not only on being innovative and progressive in the evolving legal market but, most importantly, on our people feeling engaged.
We acknowledge that our people have commitments and personal interests outside of work. We strive to create an agile working environment based on mutual trust and respect, where people can perform at their best while maintaining a sustainable balance between their work and non-work lives.
At Herbert Smith Freehills we are committed to the inclusion of all individuals participating in the application and interview process. This includes providing tailored accommodations to those who require them. You can request accommodations at each stage of the recruitment process. If you would prefer to discuss beforehand, please reach out to your local Graduate Recruitment Consultant. You can find their details at the bottom of this PAGE.
Please note:
Applications are open to
- students who are in their final year of their law degree or who have recently graduated
- students who have previously applied
- applicants who have recently commenced a graduate role or solicitor role
We accept applications from international students, provided that you have unrestricted legal rights to work in Australia when you commence our Graduate Program.
HERBERT SMITH FREEHILLS. YOUR GROWTH. OUR AMBITION.
Hiring criteria
- No experience required
- Australian Citizen +more
- Law, Legal Studies & Justice +more
- Bachelor or higher
Reviews
My role has, essentially, been to act as a sponge. Take in as much about the culture of the team and the firm as I do about the law and the work. My day to day responsibilities would include managing email correspondence and document management systems, doing drafting or proofing work, and helping out other Brisbane and interstate teams that are stretched with time intensive work in things like document review.
I am responsible as the junior lawyer on a range of matters that I have worked on since I started the graduate program. This allows me to develop client relationships and familiarity with the subject matter. My tasks include emailing clients updates, responding to client queries, amending contracts based on client or partner feedback and attending client meetings. As I have progressed in the graduate program, my responsibilities have increased at a rate that challenges me and allows me to grow.
Graduate role - tasks range from having a first go at reviewing and drafting documents, preparing pitch proposals to potential clients and assisting the team with document management when closing a deal.
About the employer
Herbert Smith Freehills
4.5
1,000 - 50,000 employees
Law
A leading global law firm delivering high-profile work that matters to our clients. We have the ambition to do things differently.
Pros and cons of working at Herbert Smith Freehills
Pros
Learning from the best. Everyone is super smart and invested in my career development. I have felt incredibly supported from day 1.
HSF has great people, great work, and great experience for anyone who comes here, especially for a graduate like myself.
The firm is really flexible with its work-from-home policy and benefits for employees who are required to work late.
The firm's culture is top-notch across the board, everyone from senior lawyers and partners to support staff are so willing to help each other.
The training and development at HSF is unmatched. Hands-on in a challenging environment where you have every opportunity to learn and grow.
Cons
Same as every top-tier firm, if there is a big deal you can be working longer hours. But the sense of achievement provides a lot of satisfaction.
There isn't anything that I can think of - it would be better if the firm invested more in graduate bonding/social events.
Long hours are a common experience in the industry and largely unavoidable given the client-centric nature of the work.
The fast-paced nature of the work means you don't always get to spend as much time as you would like on tasks.
As with all big commercial firms, work hours and pipeline can be unpredictable but that is the nature of working with big clients and transactions.