Hello and welcome to the Australian Law Student Podcast. I'm your host Oliver Hammond and on
today's episode it was my pleasure to welcome lawyer Stephen McCauley. In this episode Stephen
welcomed me into his lovely Parramatta offices and we were able to delve into his diverse
experience in the legal realm. From working for a Supreme Court judge to founding his own law firm
we talk about the dynamics of commercial litigation and what it takes to run your own law firm.
He also shares invaluable insights for budding lawyers looking to find their chosen practice
area. So without further ado sit back relax and enjoy the podcast. Thank you Stephen McCauley for
joining with me today. We want to start off with our first question and I wanted to ask you that
if you could share your journey from being a law student to perhaps experiencing working for the
Supreme Court of New South Wales as a judge.
And eventually founding McCauley Lawyers. What inspired you to take these pivotal transitions
in your career and what really inspired you to get into private practice? So I went to
Macquarie University and did my Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Applied Finance. I found
university very theoretical and there's a lot of reading a lot of cases and I really found it in
the first six months of being in the real world so to speak working for a judge at the Supreme
I learned much more in those first six months than I did in the five years that I spent at university.
It's a lot more practical being out in the real world dealing with real cases but I think
university is a good groundwork for being in practice but there's nothing like learning on the
job and dealing with real people, real cases, real life situations where people's lives are on the
line. So I did my five years at Macquarie and then I did my Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Applied
Science. During my time at university I worked for a large law firm as a paralegal which was a great
experience seeing how a really big law firm worked. And then when I got towards the end of my
degree I started sending my resume out to lots of different people and I took the approach that it
was just a good idea to send out my resume to a whole number of different areas. I really didn't
know what I wanted to get into. I was sort of interested in finance but I was also interested
in law but I wasn't really attracted to being a lawyer at that stage even though I spent a number of
years at Macquarie. And I really didn't know, coming towards the end of my law degree, I didn't know
really what I wanted to do but I just happened to send my resume to a Supreme Court judge and when I
got a phone call and I had a chat with him, it was a very informal chat, he was a lovely fellow, and so
I ended up working for a Supreme Court judge for
a year which was a really great experience. We did some very interesting cases, high-profile
cases. So I was his tip staff, so I did research for him, I helped him around the chambers, and I
mean the great thing about working for a judge was that I got to really sit in on the cases and
learn from him about what works in terms of presenting a case in court, what doesn't work,
and the cases were really interesting. So I'd highly recommend to law students to apply to the
Supreme Court. I think it's a really good experience. I think it's a really good experience.
I think it's a really good experience. I think it's a really good experience. I think it's a really
good experience. I think it's a really good experience. I think it's a really good experience.
I think it's a really good experience. I think it's a really good experience. There's about 50 judges,
so every year they have a year tip staff for each year. So that was a really great experience.
And then so once I'd done my year for the judge, I went and worked in private practice. I was
admitted as a solicitor. And so I worked in a small law firm after that, doing wills and estates,
and then I worked in a litigation firm, and then I worked in another bigger litigation firm. And
which was all great experience and I think the great thing about my early career was I got to see
big firms, small firms, mid-sized firms. I didn't become pigeonholed doing a particular area. I've
got a range of different experience and I found what I liked which was litigation and
then I set up my own firm. So after about five years as an employee solicitor I set up my own
firm. And so transitioning to private practice I suppose is a completely different field and
definitely not spoken as much about to law students. One of the sort of challenges that I
think initially is sort of faced is this idea of you know how am I going to get work? How am I
going to get clients? You know and the sort of skill set that goes beyond being a lawyer and
actually being a business owner, being a people person, being someone who can communicate with
those. How did you develop those skills and how did you I suppose get clients and what were the
sort of things that you were doing? So I think I've always taken the approach that it's a good
idea to get involved in law. I think it's a good idea to get involved in law. I think it's a good
thing. So if someone asks you to do something and maybe you feel initially a bit uncomfortable
about doing it just to say yes to it. I think I hope that is in relation to this podcast by the
way. No, no, no, no. But no I've always taken that advantage and I have found over I mean I've been
now a solicitor for nearly 20 years that one thing leads to another. So you say yes to doing
something and then that thing will lead to something else and it's the same in practice. So
you do something, you do a good job for some person who needs legal advice and then that
person will refer something, their friend or their colleague to you and it's just like a ripple
effect. One thing leads to another. Doing a good job. That's right. It's not that hard but I have
got involved in the local regional law society. So I spent three years as the president of the
Motor Law Society. I've been on the council of the Law Society of New South Wales. I've been part
of other boards and charities. But my advice would be to young lawyers because really I mean there's
so many lawyers in New South Wales. I think last year we ticked over 40,000 solicitors in New South
Wales. So there really is a saturation of lawyers. But I think as a young lawyer where you get real
not just I mean there's lots of very good lawyers out there but to really stand out you actually do
need to sort of promote yourself to get involved in different activities so that you do develop
that capacity to develop an income stream and if you want to have your own firm knowing people is
really the way to build up a flow of work. So it's not just about being a technical good lawyer.
You've also you've got to have that
second dimension to you is it's a really big active get involved in things.
And so with private practice in something like Parramatta is the work as I imagine is pretty
steady. Sydney is I suppose is a big place however everyone knows that there's there's in the city
there's obviously that's where probably I don't know if it's a majority but certainly a lot of
that 40,000 figure that you've brought up would be. What would you would you say to lawyers that
are and law students to not be so focused on the sort of CBD and to sort of really branch out.
Absolutely I mean here in Parramatta it's the geographical centre of Sydney you've got the new airport
coming in in a couple of years in the South West. So I think this is the third or fourth biggest city in Australia.
It's really the amount of development going on out here in Parramatta is enormous and the sky's the limit.
There is a lot of opportunity out here.
Traditionally lawyers have set up in the CBD in the east of Sydney but I think as Sydney is growing
in the west of Sydney the demand for legal services out in the west of Sydney is enormous and it will
only continue to grow. So I'd encourage people to sort of think outside the box and set out if
they're looking at private practice or other forms of legal practice to come out to the west of Sydney.
I'll move on now to your time with the Supreme Court. Reflecting on it could you describe what
it was like to work there?
I understand you worked for Justice Hoban who then went along to become Chief Justice of the Chief Judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court.
How would you characterise the personality and judicial approach of him and additionally
in your view what distinguishes a good lawyer from perhaps a good judge?
Yeah so Justice Hoban was a wonderful mentor, wonderful judge. He had a tremendous capacity to
work and I think probably the demand on judges is underrated in terms of I mean they have such a
high volume of caseload and they've got to get through a lot of matters and he had a
tremendous ability to process work, to make decisions and make very good decisions
and he was a wonderful mentor to me as a young law student.
He really took time out of his day to to talk to me about the cases and he gave real insights
so that was it was a fantastic experience. I couldn't recommend working for I mean it was
just one year so it was that one year after I'd finished fifth year of so I was doing the College
of Law and he allowed me to take time off to do the College of Law which I needed to do
so he was very accommodating and so it was an excellent transition from going from university
into private practice and he was very kind to he was my referee on my resume early on in my
career so it was fantastic very obliging wonderful and I kept in contact with him and his associate
many years after I'd left his employment so and I went to his farewell a couple years ago when he
retired as a judge so I mean it was a fantastic year I really enjoyed it and I highly recommend to
young to law students.
your fourth fifth year to really look at look at the supreme court there's also the federal court
the high court they all need tip staffs and associates the district court has associates
so there's a lot of opportunity to work in the court system it's a really great way to transition
into lots of other things I suppose um yeah what what was what sort of distinguishes in your view
the difference between a good lawyer and a good judge
um so I mean a lawyer really has to focus on the interests of their client and advocating for the
interests of their client.
um so that that's it's a different way of looking at things that the lawyer advocates represents
protects the interests of their client the judge um I think a good judge is a good listener has a
great ability to process work um it's obviously the fairness has to come into things giving
reasons for their decision very very technically good at the law um is very essential for a judge
so they are very different roles um I mean they're both under the umbrella of being a judge but
I think they have a different role in terms of I mean obviously a lawyer has to be able to deal
with the client in the way a judge doesn't need to deal with a client a good solicitor has a good
ability to communicate with their client but a judge has to look at the overall way in which
justice is being administered and the different parties and and how things are going to operate
and give reasons for their decision.
and so when you were um employed by um Justice Hoban would um if you're a common I suppose
requirement for for um working as a tip stuff for a judge's associate is that you have to have quite
high academics um is if am I wrong in considering that um yeah I mean every every judge makes their
own decision about who they want to um have as their associate or tip staff so sometimes um I mean
I can't speak for every judge of every court about how they would approach um but I think academics
is one part of being a good um employee of a judge um but it's not the only thing being just being
able to deal with people being obviously very mindful of confidentiality that um um I mean you
have to have a lot of discretion when you're dealing with legal matters um a lot of care with
grundies the same way and then you can't as a someone working for a judge you can't be seen to
be favouring one side over the other um so common sense I think working for a judge in common sense
to be able to present as having common sense it's it's something pretty basic but I think um
I mean the Judge needs to know that you're not the the person there they've got is not
just a bookworm I don't know lots of cases that's um I mean that's probably
um being very technically good at case law that's probably not as important and just having common
sense being able to deal with people and talk to people and yeah i'm being a normal person yeah
having people skills um and so we'll take a step away now from talking about your time as as a as
a tip staff and um we'll talk a little bit about your private practice um what would you say is
the sort of bulk of the work that you do um and um why have you why has it kept you so so interested
for so long so we do litigation um that's my main um umbrella um type of area so i do commercial
litigation deceased estate litigation and we also do personal injury um we do a bit of criminal law
as well um so yeah i enjoy litigation um and the other lawyers that i um have in my team also enjoy
litigation um i think there are sort of two types of lawyers that are
the ones that actually enjoy litigation and the ones that are more transactional type um and i
think sometime in your in your early career lawyers need to decide which path they're going
to go down um the doing the contracts and documenting things or the cut and thrust of
going to court and negotiating and litigation so um yeah so we are a litigation practice we
don't do conveyancing we don't do family law family law is a booming area but we don't do that
but um yeah we do most areas of litigation yeah and so you find the work personally very engaging
i do yeah i mean often people are in um situations that they would prefer not to be in um so there's
a lot of problem solving skills that um depending on the situation you want to get a result for the
client that is in their interest um that they might want to get out of a problem that they're
stuck in and that they're forced to be in um and often it's very emotional
driven time of their lives um most people don't like dealing with lawyers so um there's a lot of
care that needs to be taken about how people are approaching things and helping people
sort out their problems their business problems their personal problems so it is it's very
interesting work um it's rewarding getting good results for people is rewarding and do you find
um well being in private practice i suppose you're you're really exposed to the entire case as a whole
in a bit larger law firm you're probably a bit more compartmentalized you're probably a bit more
working on a single part and you don't really have a overall view of what's occurring um do you find
it that perhaps sometimes you can get so engrossed in a matter that perhaps um you're you know
pulling late nights you're um yeah working um yeah very hard on on the case um how do you balance
that i suppose with sort of personal aspects um to your life yeah i think uh just touching on what
in the beginning of the question i think the big the large law firms um they have um cases where
they're very all um consuming um and particularly for junior lawyers that they they can spend time
like uh doing what's called discovery so they'll be pouring over documents and they may not see the
whole case um and so i'd be careful not to um early on in a legal career um i mean it can be
good working for a large law firm but the downside can be that you're you're sort of
stuck in a very narrow area of doing things and you don't see the whole matter um the advantage of
small practices the cases tend to be smaller um and so you can you do see the whole matter
and there's a real enjoyment i think in dealing with the matter from the beginning to the end of
it and effectively solving the problem of the matter and it's about managing workload delegating
things we have a team of staff here
um so we um if things are getting a bit overwhelming to get other people involved in the
matter um and there's enjoyment in doing that communicating and being part of a team um so i
think it's about balancing things and working through the problems thank you for listening
to the australian law student podcast the following segment is questions from the bench
here we ask our guests a set series of questions designed for you to get to know them better
and to get key advice to help you on your journey each week we also take a
look at the questions that we've received from you our audience head over to our socials and send us
a message to get your question answered thanks for listening well steven thank you so much for
sitting down with me we'll now move on to um some rapid fire questions and we ask these questions
to all of our guests to allow our listeners to get to know the person better and to have a sort of
more personal relationship so these are the fun ones um starting off with the first one what was
your favorite subject in law school and why um i enjoyed jurisprudence so that was the first
subject i did it was all about the philosophy of law and uh i found that really interesting
it was really good a way of starting my law degree and i think it's so important to understand
what underpins our legal system the values that underpin our legal system so i enjoyed
jurisprudence i feel like um there's a lot of law students that perhaps look at legal theory
subjects with a sort of a level of distrust or perhaps they sort of feel a bit uh annoyed that
they just sort of have to do it and would you say that approach it with an open mind you can
actually learn a lot from it oh definitely absolutely i mean it's it's very interesting
once you get into it it's on the surface it might seem boring but once you actually start
getting into the detail of why why we do things the way we do things it it has a lot of practical
benefits um i still think back to my days doing jurisprudence over nearly 25 years ago i think
i mean that was there were good times and there's still a lot of relevancy to what i do moving on
to the next question what's one habit you believe has been pivotal to your success in the legal
field i think focusing on continuing education so legal education is obviously very important
lawyers in new south wales we have to
at least 10 hours some have to do 20 hours of legal education every year
but also doing education in other areas wider reading read the newspapers read in different
areas so that you're constantly building your level of knowledge it's it's so important
and so can you name a book or a movie that's been significant to you and one you'd recommend
to students um 12 angry men is my one um i found that fascinating and it has a lot of
um insights into how the legal system especially the criminal legal system works um so it's an old
movie i think it's made in the 1960s um but it's it's i think it's one of the highest rated movies
i think it has been one of the highest rated movies for for years i think it has like something like a
4.9 a lot in tomatoes and imdb so yeah i remember watching that when i was probably in year 12 i
think for an english class and so um yeah it's a really interesting movie i'm glad that i've
watched it so yeah i think i've ever read that as well um i suppose you might be interested in watching a foreign movie, have a chance to watch it.
now moving on for students aspiring to make an impact in the world what skill or quality do you
believe is most important for them to develop i think building relationships um yeah getting to
know people sitting down with people talking to people that i mean that's so so important um i
mean university is a lot about reading and and studying but um that old saying it's not what
you know it's who you know it has still a lot of relevancy to the legal profession so building
relationships yeah yeah um and um on our second last question did you always envision yourself
practicing in the field that you do and if not what did you think you'd do perhaps at the start
of law school or perhaps coming out of high school or um at different junctures um i did always think
i probably would end up a lawyer at school i liked going to um sit in the back of courts um maybe a
i liked what i liked watching the theater of law so um i actually think a lot of university
students should go to go to court and just sit in the back of a court and just if you haven't
done it because i have spoken to university students that have never actually been in court
um so yeah i i did think i would probably end up as a lawyer um and i enjoy doing it and i
see myself i mean i'm in my early 40s now i see myself being a lawyer yeah the rest of my career
did you always think that you did perhaps um focus in on private practice
though and litigation um when you when you were early on um i think it took a bit of time to work
that out um yeah i didn't know that at university i sort of fell into it in a way um you had interest
in finance i think you were saying yeah before so yeah i did my third year at university i worked
for a financial planning firm but that was good i did that for a year i worked out during that year
i didn't like it um so i then worked in a law firm in my fourth year so well yeah encouragement
to move around try different things yeah especially when you're young um and now to our last question
um what's the greatest piece of advice you've ever received and perhaps some who gave it to you
um i can't remember who gave it to me but i the advice is don't specialize too early
so i think a lot of young lawyers they want to become a particular area and the danger is that
that particular area of the law can become redundant i mean with ai and
the the pace of change is so great that um i think it's good to get experience in a whole bunch of
different areas and try your hand at what you might enjoy rather than um going for the glamour
the glamour role and the big firm maybe just try something um but try a range of things so that
you're not too specialized too early on in your legal career i suppose it's important because i
think a lot of people want to have longevity in their legal career and if they're going to do that
and they they shouldn't pick up something that they don't really know what it's like
and um if they choose that if they find out five ten years later down on the track and they hate it
it's very much harder to change at that point in your career earlier on so um yeah anyway steven
thank you so much for joining me today um it's been great having you on the podcast
over the year thank you