A conversation piece by an anonymous contributor.

As a final-year JD student, the pressure of what comes next after law school is nauseating— at least for some. Akin to being asked what your plans were after high school, being asked what I plan to do after graduation feels stifling. I have absolutely no ambition to work in corporate or commercial law. Yet, I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t make my life easier.

Of course, mainly because I subscribe to the principle that you should always shoot your shot, I applied for clerkships along with what felt like the whole second-year cohort. At the time, it felt counterintuitive. I’ve never been the corporate type and pretty much everything in that world bores me. It’s not why I came to law school. In hindsight, this probably bled through in my applications. Alas, I received a handful of rejections. It hurt my ego, sure, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted anyway. I also applied to places like the VGSO that offer clerkships, but to no avail.

Flash forward to this year, I watched heaps of friends go through that awful, anxiety-inducing graduate offer period. I watched incredibly intelligent, capable people chewing at the bit. I’ve even talked down friends who didn’t get a single grad offer, despite clerking at three of the ‘Big Six’. Wholeheartedly, I get it. Especially given the current climate, it’s not just about status; it’s about job security. The pay for graduate roles is incredibly decent, often with the added security of having your Practical Legal Training covered. When the alternative is graduating into an unstable and unkind job market, compounded by overwhelming student debt, a graduate offer is an extremely attractive safety net. But landing one is challenging at the very least.

When it’s clerkship and graduate offer season, you just know. The atmosphere at MLS becomes palpable, fragile. You can feel the building holding its breath. We spend countless hours preparing— pouring over carefully chosen words, crafting the perfect application, performing the disciplined-but-still-interesting law student in interviews— knowing that ultimately, we’ll be reduced to a cover letter, transcript and 10-minute video interview anyway.

Personally, I found the application process dehumanising. Coming from someone who definitely doesn’t stand out just by looking at my transcript, I get it. So why, then, do I find myself incredibly jealous of people who got an offer? As someone who could not be less interested in commercial law, why am I faltering? Primarily, I think it’s because the pipeline of the graduate role is so clear, with a steady incline:

Clerkship → Graduate offer → PLT and rotations → Admission → Lawyer.

I’d be lying if I said the deeply comforting prospect of knowing what comes next didn’t appeal to me. The salary is ample. Training is guaranteed. There’s an intimate graduate team and, importantly, a clear idea of where you’ll be heading after graduation. For me at least, it resembles security and the ability to make plans. For those of us who feel they don’t fit into that, the alternative feels remarkably vague.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have any experience under my belt. I’m interested in law reform, human rights and community work, and have interned in criminal law practice, community legal services and law reform institutions. During these experiences, I’ve participated in exactly the kind of work that inspired me to go to law school in the first place. What I don’t know is where the neat graduate pipeline for this kind of person is.

Don’t get me wrong, there are most definitely ways to get there. MULSS hosts ample events, and I’ve attended sessions with the law school’s careers service which I genuinely recommend. But there still isn’t much of an equivalent. Community legal centres are often under-resourced. Government opportunities are competitive. Smaller firms recruit when they need someone, rather than when a JD cohort is graduating. Really, finding any job these days mostly comes down to knowing someone, or being in the right place at the right time.

So perhaps my jealousy has less to do with wanting a clerkship and more to do with wanting the certainty that comes with one. Mind you, this is in no way an attempt to discourage students from applying for clerkships. If you want one, go for it! There’s nothing wrong with prioritising and aiming for the clerkship experience, particularly when it can secure good training, a decent salary and a straightforward path into practice— if that’s your kind of thing.

I do think we need to get better at talking about the paths that sit outside the clerkship pipeline. Law school celebrates the countless ways to use a law degree. Yet during clerkship and graduate season, the idea of success morphs into a very specific shape. When that isn’t what you want, it can be hard not to question yourself or feel like you’re falling behind. So, maybe the comfort comes from recognising that you don’t get handed this certainty. You just have to make it for yourself.