I started my legal career by joining the mergers & acquisitions (M&A) team at Deloitte Melbourne in March 2020.
Starting your first graduate job out of university at the start of the pandemic was always going to be a less than ideal experience! Despite the challenges, working in professional services for the first time was still an eye-opening experience for me.
Being a part of a market-leading M&A team meant that I got to work on large and expensive deals that involved significant private equity clients and large companies that were world leaders in their industry. All the projects I was staffed on during my time at Deloitte were interesting and important, and I relished being able to work with such a talented team and making a difference in the Australian market, that was just experiencing the start of the M&A boom which would carry on for the rest of 2020.
What Did I Do At Deloitte?
The following are some of my tasks, projects and responsibilities during my time at Deloitte:
- Drafted research memos on new tax legislation introduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic for partners and clients.
- Identify, analyse and solve complex taxation law issues that might be involved in a merger & acquisition deal.
- Closed a number of high value deals ( > $6 mil ) by conducting tax due diligence on target and client companies.
- Being the main contact and leading team member for a small deal resulting in a 10% investment from a private equity client in an ed-tech start up.
Strict time management, task prioritisation and clear communication were all skills that I had learned in my previous positions but were put to good use during my time at Deloitte. It was also good to finally exercise my ‘law’ brain, which had taken up 6 years of my life at this point.
I was promoted to Analyst in July 2021 and left Deloitte a month later.
Why Did I Leave Deloitte?
After working in the M&A team for close to one and a half years, I took the chance to take a step back and compare my previous experiences in tech and the experience of working in law for the first time. Upon reflection, I realised that I much preferred to work in tech, as it connected better with the skills and experiences I learned from my previous roles, as well as touching on soft skills, such as deep collaboration, which I valued and which I necessarily didn’t need in order to do a good job at Deloitte.
Having completely satiated my curiosity about pursuing a legal career, I decided to pivot back to tech and left Deloitte in August 2021 to start a new role as a technology consultant at Herbert Smith Freehills.