Hiring grads with degrees in: Law & Legal Studies
Our graduates must have a global perspective and be ready to work across borders and jurisdictions on complex and challenging matters in the practice areas of Banking and Finance, Private Equity, Mergers and Acquisitions, Commercial Litigation and Antitrust.
We are looking for aspirational individuals capable of working with significant responsibility from day one, who are committed to an international legal career with a dedicated team of domestic and international practitioners and who will thrive in Australia and Asia-Pacific.
At Clifford Chance, you will be working on groundbreaking deals at the heart of international business events as they unfold. With an extensive network, our lawyers collaborate daily with colleagues in offices around the world, and with clients in Australia and globally.
Our graduate program is divided into four, six-month seats (rotations) that place you in different parts of our business. You will work in each of our three core teams (Corporate, Banking and Finance, and Litigation) with different colleagues and clients, gaining exposure to the challenges they face and the ways in which we help them.
With our extensive international network and the global nature of our business, we are able to send all our graduates to one of our international offices for one of their rotations.
Graduates are expected to take on significant responsibility from the start of the program and are supported by a close team of senior and junior practitioners. With a small intake of outstanding candidates, each graduate is an integral part of the Clifford Chance team.
Our Sydney office, which consists of approximately 60 lawyers, offers the close-knit and inclusive culture of a smaller law firm with the resources, reputation and market-leading work of a global, and elite law firm.
Throughout the graduate program, you will be closely supported, both informally and through formal mentoring, with advice and guidance from the HR team and a supervisor in each seat. In general, learning at Clifford Chance follows the 70:20:10 rule, which is to say that 70% of your learning happens through practical experience, with 20% via mentoring and 10% by formal study. The seating process is akin to an apprenticeship. You will work closely alongside your supervisor and he or she sees what you do, gives you advice, checks your work and then gradually gives you more complex things to do as your skills and confidence grow. It’s a great way to learn because you have a safety net and a feedback loop right there.
You could be drafting and proofing documents, conducting due diligence on a client’s acquisition target, attending client meetings, preparing documents for a court hearing, researching titles and leases on a real estate portfolio or creating a data room ahead of a major transaction. Most of your time will be spent working in teams where you will make an important contribution to the team's success – you may even run some smaller transactions for clients.
As you might expect, life as a graduate can sometimes be challenging, particularly in the countdown to finalising a transaction or heading into a hearing. You will be expected to deliver high-quality service consistently – often across different time zones, requiring commitment, energy and enthusiasm.
Our clients include the world’s leading businesses, governments and regulators, operating across a huge range of markets, cultures and languages. With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the ever-increasing scale and pace of change it has brought, we must give our clients ever wider perspectives and deeper insights to help them overcome their challenges and realise their aims.
To do this, we seek out, develop and nurture people who are as diverse as our ever-broadening client base. We work to ensure that Clifford Chance is a place where we all can perform at our peak and give our clients the best advice they can get.
It is crucial that we provide an inclusive culture where people from diverse backgrounds work effectively together – and where we all feel comfortable and confident to develop our potential.
Our women’s networks, cultural and faith-based groups, and our Arcus network for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) colleagues and its Allies network for their supporters and friends are thriving and have helped to encourage an inclusive and integrated culture in our firm. It is important to everyone at Clifford Chance that we foster an environment where everyone can be themselves and can perform to the best of their abilities. Our lawyers, partners and business leaders are from a huge range of backgrounds and they are able to succeed equally regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or any other factor.
We recognise that expanding our variety of viewpoints is essential if we are to continue generating the brightest ideas and innovations – and we are committed to widening access to the legal profession.