The Colin Biggers & Paisley Foundation hosted three high school students last week as part of the Boundless Foundation's program to connect students from outer-suburbs and regional schools with challenging work experience in the most hard-to-reach professions.
Currently only 46% of students can access work experience during secondary school, and those from outer-suburbs and regional schools are least likely to be able to find opportunities. The Boundless Foundation works to identify students who wouldn't otherwise have the chance and match them with experience that will challenge and motivate them.
The students spent a week in the Melbourne office of Colin Biggers & Paisley engaging in a variety of different experiences, including:
- meetings with lawyers who explained their journey from school to university to legal practice;
- finding out from our staff about the wide variety of different career paths, courses and study options that they have taken;
- participating in a session on court etiquette and professional skills (including formal greetings and handshakes, body language, networking, resume writing and interview skills);
- participating in a mock interview;
- visiting the Court and sitting at the Bar table to listen to Her Honour Justice Rita Zammit as Her Honour opened the court for a personal injury trial;
- learning about mediations;
- attending the Supreme Court to watch a criminal trial; and
- undertaking a research task which they presented to a number of our young lawyers and graduates.
The feedback from the students has been very positive:
The placement has been absolutely amazing, it's been so much fun and the environment is great as well as amazing people, thank you for the opportunity!!
It's going great! I'm really enjoying the tasks I've been given and I feel it's definitely maybe a career path I'd like to take in the near future. I don't really have many questions other then what things I'll need to study to be in this career path! Thank you for this opportunity
Everyone's been really friendly and it's been a really insightful experience so far! Thank you