Graduate program

Our graduate program was included as one of the Fast Movers in GradAustralia’s Top 100 Graduate Employers of 2022 and we were identified in the GradConnection Top100 category lists as one of the Most Popular Law Graduate Employers across Australia!

Our program is a priority for us because we recognise that today’s law graduates are tomorrow’s leaders of the firm. Over the years, the program has proven to be highly successful – many of our current partners completed their graduate year with us.

As a Law Graduate you will be a part of a 12 month program which includes three, four month rotations. During your graduate year you will experience;

• A combination of on-the-job training and support in completing Practical Legal Training.
• A comprehensive induction with the national graduate cohort which lays the foundation for the year ahead.
• The opportunity to gain experience in several of the firm’s practice areas.
• An extensive support network including a buddy, a mentor and supervising partner to provide guidance and support throughout the year.
• Regular learning opportunities through our Elevate program, designed to develop our graduates and provide them with the skills and expertise to excel.
• Opportunities to participate in Pro Bono, Industry group and Smarter Law initiatives
• Ongoing feedback, both formal and informal.
• The opportunity to immerse yourself in our great culture and have fun!

The Firm

Hall & Wilcox is a leading independent Australian law firm. We are a firm of around 900 people, including more than 100 partners, delivering outstanding legal services to corporate, public sector and private clients, both Australian-based and those offshore doing business in Australia.

We were recently named Winner: Australasian Lawyer Innovative Firms 2020; Winner: Australasian Lawyer Employer of Choice 2020, Beaton Client Choice Awards 2020; Winner – Best Provider to Financial & Insurance Services Industry. We have also been granted the Employer of Choice Gender Equality citation from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Prominent Practice Areas

Hall & Wilcox offers expertise in a number of key areas of commercial practice, including:

• Banking and Financial Services
• Commercial Dispute Resolution
• Corporate and Commercial
• Employment
• Health and Community
• Insurance (General and Statutory)
• Private Clients
• Property and Projects
• Public Sector
• Tax
• Technology and digital economy
• Pro Bono

Firm Hallmarks/Values

Our Hallmarks reflect what we value as a firm and guide the way we work every day.

Stay true - Authentic to the core. Genuine, open and absolutely honest.

Be remarkable - Striving always to excel. Deep knowledge delivering the highest quality solutions.

Respect - Great to be around. Decent people, inclusive and empathetic.

Evolve Always - Embracing disruption. Curious, imaginative and tech savvy, forever challenging the status quo.

Better together - Unleashing the potency of teamwork. Co-creating a rewarding future with each other, and with clients.

Culture

One way we live our culture is through our Hallmarks. Our Hallmarks are how we articulate the behaviours consistent with our culture.

Our inclusive culture enables us to recognise and celebrate the characteristics that make each individual different and create a workplace environment in which both individuals and groups feel welcome, respected and valued.  Our commitment is reflected in our WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation, participation in CareerTrackers for Indigenous Internships for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, recruitment opportunities for people living with disability and participation in LGBTIQ+ Interfirm Networks.

At Hall & Wilcox, we support flexible and agile working to assist our people to balance their professional, personal and family life, health and wellbeing.

‘HW Evolve’ is a hybrid workplace where our people are encouraged and empowered to work flexibly both remotely and in the office.  HW Evolve provides our people with the opportunity to experience the benefits of remote working balanced with the great benefits of being in the office including opportunities to connect, collaborate, learn and have fun.

Key Clients/Matters  

Hall & Wilcox act nationally for Australian-based clients and multinational clients with Australian interests. We work with clients across sectors who lead, challenge and reshape their own industries. We build strong and enduring client relationships. Clients tell us they value our commerciality, our responsive and personal service and our interest in their business and industry.

We act for more than 20% of Australia’s top business and are Australia's largest workers' compensation employer firm. We are the only firm which is on the legal panels of WorkSafe Victoria, icare NSW and WorkCover Queensland.

Leveraging the diversity offered by our people to deliver Smarter Law to our clients is critical and supports us to being recognised externally as a firm that exemplifies diversity in its day-to-day practice.

Smarter Law

We are committed to Smarter Law. In simple terms that is delivering legal services better, faster and cheaper to our clients. Innovation is central to that. We define innovation as ‘change that adds value’. The key word is change. We are action oriented. Innovation is ingrained into one of our core values #evolvealways. We support innovation in the following ways:

• Our performance management system has Smarter Law and innovation as a key performance criteria and we recognise achievements in this area across the firm
• We have a dedicated innovation team (our Client Solutions team) who support and enable innovation in the firm. The Client Solutions team assist our people with design thinking. We use a wide range of modern legaltech tools to enable us to be more efficient and implement new legal services for our clients
• We train up our lawyers with business improvement methodologies, legaltech skills training, hackathons, workshops and other competitions to foster ideas across the firm.
• We run our matters and innovation projects with multi-disciplinary teams. Legal and other professionals working together to develop better solutions. We involve our clients in this process so they can co-create the future with us.

Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are vital components of our practise of Smarter Law and our ambition to be a pre-eminent law firm. In addition to being the right thing to do, there are many business benefits which include the attraction, retention and engagement of the best possible talent; building stronger relationships with clients; and improved decision making, problem solving and innovation through diverse teams and diversity of thinking.

At Hall & Wilcox, we are committed to creating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive workforce that reflects our community and our clients.  We understand that workplace diversity involves recognising and celebrating the characteristics that make each individual different.

Equally, we understand that workplace inclusion requires strategies to create a workplace environment in which both individuals and groups feel welcome, respected and valued, by incorporating different ways of thinking, interacting and approaching business strategies to ensure that all individuals are valued and are able to meaningfully contribute to the firm and their own careers.

Pro Bono and CSR

We’re committed to giving back to our communities by doing work for the public good. Our pro bono practice embraces our ethical responsibility as a firm to help those in need, and enriches the personal and professional lives of the Hall & Wilcox lawyers who get involved.

We are proud of our pro bono practice and our engagement with not-for-profit community groups, individuals and charities. We recognise and embrace the community responsibilities that come with being a successful, respected firm and a representative of the legal profession.  For our people, the firm’s pro bono and community involvement is personally and professionally enriching.

We run a coordinated pro bono & community practice that comprises of employees from all areas of the firm. We encourage and give credit for pro bono work to everyone at the firm.  As part of our graduate program, our Law Graduates can choose to rotate through our Pro Bono practice, which includes a one day per week secondment to a community legal center.

We have fostered close, ongoing relationships with several inspirational community organisations, to which we provide pro bono legal services. Some of these include:

• Public Interest Advocacy Centre
• Justice Connect
• Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS)
• Human Rights Law Centre

Career Development

At Hall & Wilcox, we are committed to a culture of development and continuous improvement.  Our focus is to retain and grow our talent by supporting our employees in their personal and professional development.

Learning is an ongoing process that is critical in every aspect of our work. That’s why we create an environment where collaboration, critical thinking and creativity thrive. It’s what drives Smarter Law and helps us to create a high performance learning culture.

HW Academy is how we deliver and support formal learning at Hall & Wilcox. It aligns learning to strategy and provides clear development pathways for all our people. We also encourage all types of mentoring (formal, peer, situational, reverse) and our unique program, Mentor Connect, makes mentoring accessible to everyone.

Starting with a personalised induction program, your ongoing development will include the opportunity to participate in regular legal seminars, internal and external workshops and online learning. We develop leadership capability with bespoke programs for emerging and new leaders, senior leaders and high potential female leaders.

Elevate is an integral part of the Graduate year. It provides insight into our business and the business of law, helps Graduates build connections and internal networks and provides continuous learning opportunities.

Hall & Wilcox is proud of and cherishes its culture. Culture is something we constantly nurture. Our culture has been described as warm and welcoming, inclusive and supportive. We aim to strike a healthy balance between working hard and maintaining a high level of professionalism with having fun and being able to laugh at ourselves. By having happy and engaged people, we ensure our clients also receive a great experience.

The firm’s ambition and growth is also a factor in our culture. We are a progressive ‘firm on the rise’, and this helps us to provide fantastic opportunities for our people to grow and progress.

Things our people love about working at Hall & Wilcox include: the warm, friendly and supportive atmosphere; inclusive and respectful culture; Friday night drinks every Friday; our art program; our offices; social and sporting activities; motivated and enthusiastic leaders; collaborative team environment and community involvement.

The Hall & Wilcox Hallmarks

Our Hallmarks are an expression of how we expect our people to go about their work. By having all of our people live our hallmarks day in, day out we will deliver Smarter Law to our clients:

Benefits

We offer a range of benefits to support our people in and beyond the workplace:

• Be Well Program – a calendar of events and activities designed to inspire our people to improve their individual health and wellbeing.

• Daily breakfast - a healthy start to the day for everyone.

• Fresh fruit – delivered to our offices on a regular basis.

• Dress for your day – our people are empowered to dress based on their day - what, who and where.

• Quiz – a Hall & Wilcox tradition whereby teams gather on a regular basis for some trivia and a laugh.

• Purchase of additional leave – opportunity to purchase up to four weeks of additional leave per annum.

• Paid parental leave – up to 18 weeks, as well as other resources for our working parents such as Childcare Kit

• Flexible working arrangements.

• Employee assistance program – access to confidential external professional counselling for our people and their immediate families.

• Kids Christmas Party – annual event for our people and their families.

• Mental Health awareness – specialised training for leaders on managing for team wellbeing and introductory program for all team members.

• Mindfulness – programs to help our people manage stress, improve productivity and achieve a good work/life balance.

• Superannuation consultations – regular 1:1 consultation with superannuation expert.

• Social and sporting activities – organised by dedicated social and sporting committees.

• Recruitment referral fee – we offer a referral fee for successful referrals to the firm.

• Corporate discounts – include discounts for gym, movie tickets, legal services and the Microsoft Office Home Use Program.

Learning & Development

At Hall & Wilcox the ongoing development of our people is a key priority. By investing in our people, we are developing experts in the wider fields of law and business.

• We believe that learning is an ongoing and continual process that should be encouraged in all aspects of peoples’ work, H&W Academy is our approach to learning and development and features structured learning and development and features structured learning and development programs aligned to the firm’s strategy, opportunities for our people to connect across teams and offices and support for the creation of a high performance learning culture.

• We support our people to participate in a wide range of learning and development opportunities, including internal and external seminars and workshops, and encourage skill development through on the job coaching and feedback. Our partners and our people regularly contribute to firm learning by presenting on new developments in their area of specialty or on cases of interest. Firm social collaboration tools also encourage informal learning.

• For many people, further study is a valuable way to strengthen their expertise. We have a generous study policy, which includes financial support, various study options and study leave for approved courses.

• Each person’s learning and development needs are discussed formally through our performance review and planning program. We not only encourage our people to take responsibility for their development and to identify and discuss training requirements and requests during their reviews but to also have ongoing discussions about their development throughout the year.

• Formal mentoring programs are in place for our law graduates transitioning to first year lawyer and for senior lawyers.

• Secondment opportunities with our clients provide excellent learning opportunities for our lawyers and help to enhance our service offering and client relationships.

Graduate Dates 2022

• Monday 28 February – Applications for graduate positions open.
• Sunday 10 April – Applications for graduate positions close at 5:00pm.
• Monday 2 May – Interviews for graduate positions commence.
• Friday 3 June – Offers for graduate positions can be made.
• Friday 10 June – Offers for graduate positions must be accepted or declined by 5:00pm

Learn more - view more videos here