I come from a family of lawyers, my Grandfather and father were both lawyers. I have two sisters who are Lawyers. My father was also heavily involved in St Bede’s, so for me, growing up it was just natural to go into law, I never thought of doing anything else. It wasn’t until after the 2011 Earthquake, that my career took on a different path and I went into Commercial Project management with one of the Insurance company project management offices, a role that saw me doing both legal work and, getting a ground grounding in basic building and Earthquake related issues. I also had the responsibility for the Insurers demolition of their clients Red Zone properties.

My career changed again, when I was approached to work for a multi-national in the Equipment Finance sector. The role was sales-based funding heavy equipment such as Trucking Fleets, Forestry Equipment and aircraft as well as any other “working assets”. Regreattbly the company was sold just 14 months after I started the role so I decided to return to Legal Practice after 5 years away. The return to Law was with a new vigor as I took the skills learnt from both the Project Management role and the Finance sales role and applied them to building a legal practice. I have a very busy property law practice which was helped in no small part by my experience in building and sales in the years immediately preceding.

Leaving Law and going into different career paths were defining moments in my career, because they gave me new skills to build upon. F

My work highlight I guess you could say was to open my own business in September 2019 as a Property Lawyer. I review EQC work done on homes in the building reports, a role that in the Christchurch property market is essential and with my Commercial Project work is something I have a solid understanding of.

As I said at the beginning, when I left St Bede’s, I didn’t give any other career but Law a thought, however, if I look back at my time, while I don’t regret my career path, if I could have done it all again, I may have gone into Banking or Real Estate. The advice I would give and do give to young people today is, “If you are not sure of what you want to do, explore every option out there, University is not the only avenue to have a successful and happy career and you can change careers successfully”. As the quote says “Life is a journey, not a race”.