Title: ‘From Pigeon Hole to Spreading your Wings? Thinking Deeply and Broadly About Legal Career Paths’

Having spent eight years working as a project finance lawyer, working for banks and companies on the drafting and negotiation of natural resource and infrastructure development projects in emerging markets, I began to have doubts as to why I chose a legal career. Through a mixture of further study, grasping consulting opportunities and networking, I have put myself on an ongoing trajectory towards finding more depth and meaning to my work. In this seminar I will talk about my background, my book to be published with Cambridge University Press on the implementation of indigenous people’s rights to land in public/private financed transnational development projects and the projects I have been involved with after leaving a law firm environment. I hope this will foster some creative and positive thinking around the type of work you can do with a contractual and commercial law background and will help students from feeling pigeon holed, as I did, early on in my private law career.