Solicitor

Henry Budd

Mallesons corporate finance solicitor Anthony Wicht, 27, is part of the firm’s climate change and green energy group which tracks the changes in this rapidly evolving legal field.

( Q ) What does a solicitor do?
( A ) A solicitor is a type of lawyer who advises a whole range of clients. Here at Mallesons we look after a range of commercial clients – big Australian corporations and international corporations – and advise them on a range of legal issues. In the particular area I am in the issues tend to be around raising money for the company’s activities and also around the company’s policies.

( Q ) What is an average day at work?
( A ) You work very closely with a number of people. Because Mallesons is a partnership you have a partner directly supervising your work so you work closely with them throughout the day. As you get more experience there is an increasing amount of client contact and that is really picking up for me at the moment. Clients will call me directly and say, “This is the issue and how do you think we go about solving the problem?”. Sometimes I can give an answer to that straight away and sometimes I need to talk to other people such as the partner I work for or others throughout the firm.

( Q ) Do you work as part of a team?
( A ) There is a lot of teamwork. It varies depending on what part of the company you are working for, but in the project finance area you work really closely with the people who are a few levels more senior than you. With the climate change work I have been dealing with a lot of people from different areas of the firm to co-ordinate the things they do. Climate change is obviously an area which is changing rapidly. Governments are bringing out policies and regulations quite rapidly. So to keep on top of that, what we do here is to get a lot of the interested junior people to monitor what comes out and review the legislation and point out to the group what the new features are.

( Q ) How did you get to where you are now?
( A ) I did a combined civil engineering and law degree at the University of NSW. At the end of my second last year I came to Mallesons as a summer clerk. Once you do a clerkship you are usually offered a graduate position the following year when you have finished university and that was the case for me.

( Q ) Why do a combined degree?
( A ) I think it was a case of not really knowing what I wanted to do when I finished school. I really liked the science-type stuff, but on the other hand I didn’t want to lose the English subjects and [public] speaking I’d been involved in at school.

( Q ) Has engineering helped in your current job?
( A ) Definitely. The reason I got involved in the climate change group was because I was interested in some of the more technical aspects of climate change. Lots of new technologies are coming out in order to combat climate change. Wind farms are springing up and some of the new geothermal-type technologies are fairly challenging engineering problems. Because I was interested in those I decided to join the climate change and clean energy group.

( Q ) What do you most enjoy about your job?
( A ) The constant variety. One day is never the same as the next. You come in one day and the problem you are faced with is completely different to the problem you were faced with yesterday and that can be exciting.

( Q ) Are there any drawbacks?
( A ) It’s true that lawyers work long hours. I have quite a few friends who have gone into engineering and they work less than I do, but at the same time I don’t think I would swap it because of the constant challenge and excitement. Even though you are at work for a long time it can feel as though you’ve only been there for five minutes by the time you are ready to go home.

( Q ) Where do you see yourself in the future?
( A ) I see climate change as a real issue and one where there are a whole lot of different factors coming into the mix. I think being in the position where you advise some of these really big companies that have the power to do a lot in relation to climate change, is a pretty exciting prospect.