Hello and welcome to the Australian Law Student Podcast. I'm your host, Oliver Hammond.
On this week's episode, my co-host Alex Nielsen was able to sit down and have a conversation
with well-known commercial lawyer, James Dappergy. James has gained notoriety for his ongoing
series, A Coffee and a Case Note, which I would strongly encourage everybody to check
out. On this week's episode, they talk about making mistakes in law school and in law practice,
the importance of approachability and resilience, and James' legal career. They also discuss
the recent High Court decision, which has ruled that indefinite detention is invalid.
So without further ado, sit back, relax, and I'll hand it over to my co-host, Alex Nielsen.
Well, hello and welcome to the Australian Law Student Podcast. I'm Alex Nielsen, and
today we have a very special episode with a very special guest. Our first ever time
having a guest, and let me tell you, we've done well for our first one. I'll give you
a hint as to who he is. He's a commercial and litigation lawyer who approaches his work
with a combination of approachability and rigor.
Now, that's his day job. You probably know him from his Coffee and a Case Note podcast,
or maybe perhaps his Spooko podcast, depending what you're into. This focuses on horror movies,
and he releases one a week, so very interesting stuff. Recently, he has become the owner and
founder of his very own law firm, Graverman, which will practice in some interesting niches
of commercial law, which we'll be able to get into soon. But for now, good morning to
Mr. James Dappergy.
Thank you so, so much for having me, Alex, as we set off, Mike.
Well, may we say good morning. It's a slightly rusty one for me. I had some good sporting
success last night that I managed to enjoy all of, and so feeling the after effects this
Well, we're not a cricket podcast, but we are an Australian podcast, so I think it's
fair to discuss that, yes, we've had a good win overnight, maybe one that we weren't expecting
a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, big night for you, James. I caught it. I pulled up stumps
early, but you didn't.
You got the lead.
No pun intended there. So just firstly, James, before we get into the nitty gritty of your
background in terms of what you do as a commercial litigation lawyer, just wanted to quickly
mention as a part of our legal news segment, the recent High Court decision in, it's a
pseudonym, NZYQ, which has overturned indefinite detention of unlawful non-citizens. And it
was ruled incompatible with the constitutional limits, which has been held up by Al-Khattab,
and Godwin in 2005. So this decision has overturned about 20-odd years of precedent, plus 20-plus
years of precedent. So obviously, James, we don't have the judgment yet, so we can't get
into the nitty gritty of it. But I feel that this is a fair progression in the law and
maybe shows the direction the High Court will be heading in, in the Gagelert era. Any thoughts
on that, James? Or are you happy to agree with what I said?
It's probably not for me to add as it's out of area, but I do think...
I think that there's a lot of marinating on judgments that affect an entire, and I'll
loosely use the commercial word, sector. Like this can aid us as we get oriented. The cases
we remember from uni, our Al-Khatabs, our snails in a bottle, our cup of smoked balls,
it's always instructive to have the, what we might think of as academic understanding
of the law as it was-
brought to the fore in contemporary decisions.
So it's a decision that will have to be read properly
for either of us to make a proper comment, as you rightly say.
But it does strike me as one that does give some pretty clear suggestions
as to where that sector will be heading,
and I will make no comment on it as I try to avoid commenting
on judgments as best I can.
But, yes, we have an outcome and we'll have a judgment soon.
I feel, as a law student, I feel a bit cheated that I've just wrapped
my head around Al-Khateb and now it's all been thrown out the window.
But, well, that's for another episode.
Welcome to legal practice.
So, James, tell me, there's 24 hours in a day.
You are a commercial litigation lawyer.
You run your coffee in a case on a podcast,
which is presented weekly, very regularly.
You have your Spooko podcast, which is also weekly.
You've just started your own law firm, Graveman.
You're the founder.
Can you explain to me where you find, and mind you,
you also have a family life.
You find time to watch the cricket.
So tell me how you manage this.
This is a lot of time and not a lot of, yeah, a lot of work
and not a lot of time, James.
How do you manage this?
Would you like the honest answer, Alex?
The honest answer is similar to anyone who does a lot of things,
is I probably sleep less than I ought to.
And that's not always cricket related.
In fact, it's very, very rarely cricket related.
That's why the coffee is important.
So I have a number of goals that include sleeping a bit more and these sorts
of things into the future.
But if I can sort of get to the real meat of the question about time management,
over the years, it's just become a real question of priorities for me.
Spooko, the horror film podcast, and I should say,
I'm too scared to watch horror films.
So that podcast is all about my co-host sharing the scary plots
so that I can freak out.
That is really efficiently run and all I do is show up for a chat
for about half an hour, 40 minutes.
So all the editing and all the actual hard work, heavy lifting,
is handled by my co-host, who's also my best mate from high school.
And so that serves as a significant privilege.
It's a big part of the proportion of my social life.
And then with work stuff, and I sort of put coffee and a case note
sort of within the kind of work parameters, within that sort of umbrella,
a big part of coming up as a young lawyer is sort of learning time sheets
and learning time management and how much time in the day should be billable
and how much time in the day should be business development and marketing
and how much time in the day should be admin.
And I'm afraid just over the years, those experiences have compounded
that sort of allow me to.
I think about time in a fairly regimented way,
which is fairly beneficial for doing legal work.
There's an argument that it's not as beneficial for other facets of life
where I might have fairly inflexible ways of thinking about some things.
But the real answer on the time management thing for me over the years
has just become a question of prioritising and what is important to me.
So, you know, family one, daylight two.
And then if I have sort of professional ambitions
or, you know, creativity ambitions,
we can then think about where they might fit in in the cracks.
So I've always tried to select whether it's works of creativity like Spooko
or I used to make rap music.
I know, yes, Peach.
Or whether it's...
Peach is your name?
Look, we are a generation of Jameses and so it had to be a riff on my surname.
And like, so whether it's a work of creativity like that
or whether it's a sort of business development,
whether it's sort of projects like Coffee and a Case Note
has sort of become there's a question of wanting to do it
in the most efficient way possible.
And so the best tip I could make to someone trying to emulate
balancing a full commercial practice with activities
that includes sort of online publication is that perfect is the enemy of good.
And so if you're trying to push stuff out, if you are, for example,
an ambitious law student, you're trying to push stuff out,
you're trying to push stuff out, you're trying to push stuff out,
you're trying to push stuff out, you're trying to push stuff out,
and very engaging podcast, just do good.
Perfect is going to stand in the way.
There's always more audio tweaking you could come back and do, Alex.
And you'll always have your guest saying, um, more than you'd like.
But getting to a point where you're really 80-20 about it,
where you're really like, look, in an ideal world,
that would have been utterly perfect.
I'll get it on the next one.
So that real I'll get it on the next one sort of approach
is what I'd encourage anyone to adopt.
trying to do a number of things and keep all those balls in the air these time management
priorities and strategies to make your time management more efficient and not things that
come naturally to most people i take it that it's probably not something that might come naturally
to you as a law student were you a good time manager and how did you build how did you build
those skills i was fortunate in that i um i've been an 80 20 person through my life or perhaps
an 81 19 is some people who've had me give them feedback on some of their work or their
approaches to practice might might think of me um so i'll say i've been an 81 19 person through
through school and everything like that um and so that sort of gave me an experience where
doing enough like like i understood doing doing enough through sort of exams and through schooling
and through law school um and making the time to do that
sorry getting my head around doing enough was a very important sort of way that i came to
understand the way i learned and i also understood that i was bad under immediate time pressure i was
never like a late night crammer and oh my gosh it's due tomorrow i better start sort of person
so i'd always have the weight of anxiety um descend on me you know the moment the assignments
are signed i'm like okay it was assigned today great it's due in six weeks okay first draft
should be done in five weeks okay notes for the first drafts
should be done in four weeks okay research should be done in three weeks and so um through writing
like you know honors theses and this sort of thing i was sort of very fortunate in that my mind sort
of works in a way that it stages these things out and i think that's more about self-knowledge some
people might be good at sort of cramming the night before and that's awesome love and blessings to
anyone uh who takes that approach to life but i just knew about me that i would have a very unhappy
life if i was you know anxious about not having finished any number of things at any one time
planned out and getting them underway has been something that's benefited me over the years
well i'm absolutely not a crammer but i'm i'm also not an organizer i'm not a i'm not a person
that uses a calendar i'm not a person who and yeah it's much to my detriment probably because
i've noticed a lot of my friends at law school are starting to use their apple calendars and
it all looks beautiful nice and i'm thinking i haven't even opened my apple calendar in years
um a lot of highlighters and post-it notes and that sort of thing
yeah no i'm not one of those i'm more so it's in the head
and if i forget about it which quite often happens i forget about it but
yeah i think building those time management skills are definitely something that all law
students have to eventually face or the opposite or or or come to understand that that that sort
of time management is not your forte and just sort of building ways to work around it yeah you know
there's no there's no one way to really succeed in this profession is the view i take and so
um if you know about yourself that alex you're never going to look at the lovely diary that
might suggest you buy or you're never going to glance at the calendar on the wall i don't think
there's a problem with that at all right um i think it's more about look you know i've got i've got this
far using this method yeah let's see how much further it can take yeah exactly exactly i think
i think there's really something to that so as a law student did you firstly what made you want
to study law so i understand your father was a lawyer and you am i correct in saying you come
from a fairly long line of lawyers yes i think it's the term nepo baby okay
is the accurate description yeah so um my dad's a lawyer his dad was a lawyer his dad was a lawyer
and so all i knew growing up was i never fucking want to do that yeah um and so even in final year
of law school oh so so sorry i didn't go straight into law i did arts um arts commerce with sort of
an economics sort of edge and i did a lot of history there i got okay marks in history and
graduated from that about age 22 23 and thought oh geez i'm not going to do that i'm going to do
um i better do another degree that equips me for the workforce and because i've got okay marks there
i went on to do what was then called graduate law that i think is now called a jurist doctor
okay um and even in doing that i was like i'm never going to practice law man i'm going to be
a pop music journalist or something along those lines yeah um but at each sort of decision point
i was like well having done the degree i'll at least get admitted and then well having having
been admitted let's at least do two years of law school and then i'm going to do another degree
of work and just see yeah and now having done two years of work um throw in family and a bit
of lifestyle creep there's sort of a forward momentum there and that's sort of one ugly way
of describing it but but a more genuine way for me is that um because i didn't have a burning passion
to do law as a young person i was quite open-minded i'm like oh well this seems a bit interesting i'll
just explore this area um and that's kind of allowed me to over time sort of actually really
with my area of practice because i wasn't desperately burning captain of the debating
team and you know from age eight always in arguments and these sorts of things
it was very much the opposite um that despite the family background and perhaps as a very
um very sort of teenage angsty reaction against the family background oh i'm never going to do
that yeah um it sort of gave me the space to say well i like actually let's see what this
profession has to offer and over time it's turned out that um
i might be somewhat well adapted to to being able to enjoy a little bit of longevity in it so
very um slightly unconventional on one view like how unconventional is it for someone with my
background to become a lawyer at the end but uh there was no certain thing in the middle if that
makes sense james i would call you a nepo grand baby or nepo grace grand baby i don't think
baby cuts it for you um
i saw a video that you you posted and you were discussing the hardest and easiest subjects or
maybe it was just the hardest subjects in law school uh and you said one of the hardest for
you was i think was federal constitutional law you said you scored maybe 49 is that is that right
am i getting that right yes so in an essay yes so hearing al-kateb sort of sends a bit of a
down my spine yeah uh so there's obviously lots of trials and tribulations and ups and downs to
being someone like you who had sort of studied a couple other degrees weren't hell-bent on to
getting into law maybe taking sort of a challenge like that or a hitting a roadblock like that
getting a poor mark um might not have been as hard for you as it would have been for others who are
really putting all in uh into law school but how would you how would what what advice would you
give to someone who has just maybe gotten a poor mark on an exam which i know all law students at
and sort of picking yourself up and then being resilient enough to keep going
i'm not qualified to give proper useful advice because my advice tends to boil down to
uh keep going or it's worth it yeah um that that that you're kind of putting the trust in the
decision you made in the past of like well i think what i want to do in my life is have this degree
yeah and in order to do that i gotta keep going of course a more sophisticated
approach is um well is this actually what i really want to be doing and the the view i take to that
is having just failed an exam is not the right time to make that decision having failed this
exam maybe i should give up um i think i think those two thought thought process order or those
two thought processes ought to be pretty like quarantined from one another and so if in your
heart of hearts it is something that interests you and engages you um there's sort of crash or
crash through um sort of mentality that i'd encourage you to adopt because you're so right
alex that uh all the sort of scary formidable besuited lawyers and everyone arguing in al-qatab
and uh everyone in the high court recently they all had their disappointments um everyone started
off not knowing everything or not knowing anything um and it's a learning journey that everyone in
practice has gone through
and it's only the most narrow-minded um and sort of uh ignorant and cowardly practitioners
i think that forget about those times when you didn't know everything yeah in your practice
area and forget about those times when you failed too and so you you're actually going through a
process that everyone who's in practice today went through and so i think being kind to yourself and
saying yeah all right
that's not the mark i was after we'll get them on the next one is very much the sort of approach
i'd i'd i'd encourage anyone who's disappointed with their marks to adopt right and those
disappointments ups and downs will follow you from law school well into your career
as you as you briefly talked about in your une university of new england law ball
ah yes uh presentation which i found very engaging and very interesting
you talked about your three biggest stuff ups i think you used a different word but i'll use
stuff ups am i sorry i think i've already sworn no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
that's fine i can i can withdraw it as well no no no it's fine i described them as fuck ups in the
video but i'm but i'm content for you to describe them however however you would like so yes you
you talked about your three greatest stuff ups uh in legal practice and i think the reason that
firstly that people like to hear about your stuff ups are because everyone makes stuff ups and it's
comforting to hear someone of your stature james that that has also made a stuff up people sort of
think they look up to older people and they're like oh my god i'm not going to do that i'm not
going to do that because i'm not going to do that i'm going to do that i'm not going to do that i'm
not going to do that i'm not going to do that i'm just kind of like a bunch of older lawyers or more
experienced lawyers uh who seem to know everything about what they're talking about and they think
how could they ever how could they ever um make the return date on a subpoena the day that they're
going to trial but that's something something you did james how dare you alex so just talk me
through like as you we mentioned resilience and you said well just keep going if it's something
that you want you just have to keep going uh so just tell us a bit about how how you you pick
yourself up in those situations and then you can talk a little bit about how you've been
situations especially focusing on your first one uh you mentioned three stuff ups but the first one
you're a junior lawyer fresh into legal practice and so when when you make that mistake um
it can be hard to pick yourself up because you you don't know if you will really do i have what
it takes um i've really made a big stuff up here how do you pick yourself up especially as a junior
lawyer yes um my oh you just keep going advice is seeming a little more glib um now that we
deal with it um you just keep going including with the support of people around you yeah and um so
what what i tend to find is is one of those stuff ups is when i was quite a senior and eminent
lawyer and it was pretty serious stuff up and um and pretty dumb and the support i immediately had
was from fellow directors of law and i was pretty serious stuff up and um and pretty dumb and
of the law firm i was then a director at and it was profound and it was immediate and it was
complete support and then similarly in 2009 uh the issue that you're exactly like referring to alex
where um some of our listeners will be familiar with subpoenas that's essentially um a uh court
order that requires you to produce some documents to the court uh and this was a long-running case
and i was given the task of preparing a subpoena and i thought the best date to get these documents
that we need to do is to get them to the court and i was given the task of preparing a subpoena
was of course the same day as the first day of you know the final hearing of the whole matter i
thought great everyone's going to be at court all these documents will be there right on the
doorstep they'll be able to use them and of course there were voluminous documents there were heaps
of them and it was um more or less useless to have such voluminous documents there at court
without weeks and weeks and possibly even months to consider the implications of what was in there
so choosing to uh have those documents returnable on the day of the hearing was a massive mistake
and look how do you get through it the next consequence was i didn't work at that firm much
longer um and it was through the support of people i'd studied with um you know some people think you
know the network you build is sort of quite an ugly buzzword and makes you feel makes you sound
transactional about friendships and transactional about colleagues well it's not that um your
network if we if we use the word for it is what will not merely sort of enable your
success to sort of get work referrals and you know get the jobs and make the money and do all
the deals and all that sort of thing it's also um if you've been sort of authentic and genuine in
the relationships you're building through your life it's also a great uh support to you in those
real times of trouble um and so i was able to speak to any number of junior lawyers who were
facing any number of comparable situations who were able to be very empathetic to me and there
were people who i'd known for years because i'd gone to law school with them and so
that was a huge benefit to me so that resilience point um sometimes it can be your own internal
resilience of like gritting your teeth and keep going but vastly more often it's about sort of
the family you've got around you um and the sort of the friends and networks and colleagues you've
built including at law school so yeah um that that sort of pick yourself up point is vastly easier if
you've got a bunch of other people who are offering you a hand as well 100 and that is one of the the
biggest benefits of law school legal practice is the sort of brotherhood and sisterhood that
that comes out of it um you spend many years together in law school and then you become
colleagues so it's really uh great to build that network so coming from a low point in your career
james that early point uh to a really high point now you've just founded your own law firm
tell us a little bit about gravman i understand you're going to be practicing in some pretty
interesting niches of commercial litigation uh corporate oppression derivative action
so firstly just tell us a little bit about gravman tell us why you're so interested in
commercial litigation uh and why why it's an area that you're passionate about and what you
aim to do with gravman oh alex i love a dorothy dixer and i'm really grateful um so gravman the
name is sort of it um it's a word you might have heard before or might not have i think it's a
latin derivation and it's a similar derivation to gravity and it's a word that lawyers occasionally
use to sort of refer to the central part of a dispute or the central part of a cause of action so you might
say hey the claim was for breach of contract but the gravman was that the lawn mowing services that james
provided to alex were really not up to standard right so it sort of refers to the app that like the real
focus of the issue and so okay the message i'm trying to communicate oh i've got to start saying we now
don't i the message we at gravman are trying to communicate
we um all of us will band together uh and will assist clients in getting to the real heart
of a matter without any extraneous mess around the edges if i can just try to be as open and
and authentic as i can about what gravman is yes it is a law firm and yes it is difficult to set
one up and yes it is a bit of a career high point and i'm very proud it also is just me and a four
like this four-year-old macbook where you know
running this meeting on and a mobile phone and my brain um so and you know a business name and an email
address and just a couple of little little other things um so um there's a humility point that that the areas of
practice we're in um we at gravman all of us here it's just it's just me as i said earlier um we are looking to get
into tends to be engaged with by firms with a little more complexity a little more experience a little more
right here at gravman so right um my my hope and plan um is that gravman's going to hang on to this
humility uh i'm as i say i'm here having watched the world cup last night and having put on a load
of washing before you and i you and i hopped on the zoom alex is that gravman can maintain this
sort of humble beginnings yeah um sort of humility and approach to the world and can engage in
reasonably complex commercial litigation that i'll come to for that other part of the world
your question um so why commercial litigation um in this area um there's this sort of truism
in legal practice that your specialty comes to find you and i think there's something to that
it just so happened the first law job i got of any real substance was doing civil litigation work was
doing litigation other than crim other than family um and that sort of edged into a bit of a
specialty in what we sometimes call estate litigation or family provision claims where
people seek more money from the estates of people who've passed away or their notional estates
then over time that and a bit of work in building and construction sort of led to an understanding
of partnership structures and companies and trusts and how these things worked and over time i just
came to be very interested in the peculiar fiddly little issues that popped up in companies that
were of this kind of small medium size and i developed some interest and some a little bit
of expertise in that area and it then became a bit of a virtuous circle of well the more interested
i was the more i read about it the more i read about it the better i got in it and the better
i got in it the better i executed my skills and you sort of have this virtuous circle of the more
you practice in the area the more you learn about it the more you enjoy it so the more you read
about it so the more you enjoy it so the more you learn about it so the better your work is
So over time, leaning into that area of interest,
area of curiosity has been really valuable
and that'll be the heart of the work Graverman does
as we currently understand Graverman
because it's just me and a laptop.
We here at Graverman will just be doing the work
that I like to do.
We'll see what the future holds,
but for the moment, it's very much those areas.
So I take it, and this is the final question
I'll ask you before I let you go, James,
but I understand that approachability
and rigour are your two key concepts
to legal practice.
And so I understand that you'll be applying
those two concepts to your work at Graverman.
All of us here will.
Yeah, that's right.
You and your laptop will both be working
with approachability and rigour.
So it's quite clear why rigour is a key sort
of point for a lawyer.
But most people, when they think about lawyers,
approachability is probably not
and just in the common understanding of a lawyer,
it's probably not one of the things that comes to mind.
Tell us why approachability is important for you
and why Graverman will be able to essentially
do better work because of your approachable nature.
Alex, approachability, I think, is a word I like
that sort of describes the ability to get your message
across sort of quickly and easily.
And so approachability, I say, is not merely smiling,
looking at someone and shaking their hand warmly
and then remembering their name when you next see them,
although those sorts of skills are very nice to have as well.
It is the ability that you can communicate to others
and the ability for you to be able to listen
and understand what is being said.
So when I say that I want Graverman's practice,
all of Graverman, including me, to practice in a way
that is approachable, I want firstly for us to be good,
listeners, for us to understand, listeners and readers,
to understand the material and the law that is in front of us
and then to be clear communicators,
to be able to turn around sometimes quite complex concepts
and make them understandable at the listener's ear.
A lot of technical lawyers are really good
at explaining things in a technical way.
We here, including me, want to be technically adept.
We want to be rigorous, but we also want to be approachable
We want to be clear with the way we communicate
so that the fact it makes sense at my end might be one issue,
but I need it to make sense at your end, anyone listening as well.
And I say the strength of Graverman will be its ability
to combine that technical excellence or expertise
with a nice approachability to it as well.
So that is the plan and that's where I say approachability is valuable.
And Alex, if you'll forgive me for boring you a moment longer,
I also think it's an important point about advocacy.
I think it's an important point about advocacy as well.
One of the most valuable assets you have as a litigator
is a judge's attention span.
And if you are able to, in the shortest time possible
and the easiest way possible, convey a concept to the bench,
then you'll have one of three things.
You'll have a happy judge who has to spend less time speaking with you,
or you'll have a judge who's got more attention span
to share with you immediately after you've made your point.
Or you will have a point that has been made nice and clearly
or perhaps a combination of all three of those things.
And so your readers and listeners' attention spans
are the most valuable things you're going to have in legal practice is my view.
And so to be as approachable as you can, I say,
is a really important part of using those assets as effectively as you can.
And last thing I'll say, but I would say it's perhaps even a rare asset
because we hear a lot about legalese and how the law is unapproachable,
It's not easily understood by someone who doesn't have a background in it.
So to have that approachability is maybe a rare asset,
something that other solicitors or other practitioners
may not be able to deliver as well as you can at Gravenan.
Well, that's the plan, Alex.
That's hopefully the niche that Gravenan finds itself weaving into.
As you kindly referred to earlier, I'm sort of five or six years
into the Project Coffee in a case note where I try to summarise
quite complex commercial decisions.
It's a fairly approachable and straightforward way.
And so I say that I and we have a fair bit of experience
taking some pretty fiddly, complex scenarios
and turning them into reasonably approachable bite-sized chunks
that are nonetheless rigorous and complete in relation
to the law and the facts.
Well, thank you very much, James.
This has been a great chat.
I'm sure our listeners will hopefully find a lot of value in it, as I have.
We really appreciate your time and we wish you absolutely the best,
So all the best, James.
Thank you very much.
Alex, it's been a complete delight.
I'm very grateful personally, and you're very welcome.
And everyone here at Gravenan is delighted as well.
So thanks so much for having us.
Thank you very much, James.