Sebastian Hanscomb (Class of 2012)
Paul Galea:
Hello, Sebastian Hanscomb. It’s Paul Galea from International Grammar ringing up to see how you are and what’s going on in your exciting life.
Sebastian:
Hi, Paul. How are you?
Paul Galea:
I’m well, mate. Now, I’ve got to sort of set the scene a little bit. I decided or hoped to interview you upon seeing the fact that you’d just been admitted to the Bar. That was on your LinkedIn, and I was super impressed and thought, “You know what? This is a man who can talk. Obviously, if he’s going to be a barrister, he can certainly talk.” And I remember that you could talk from when you were at school, and I thought, “What a great guy to interview.” So here we are.
Sebastian:
I’m very happy to hear from you.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, good, mate. Because we had a fair bit to do with each other at school and always pretty good, I think. You left in 2012 and you’ve been admitted to the Bar in 2023. You want to tell us about that journey and give us the rundown of how it all happened.
Sebastian:
Yeah, absolutely. Now I have to give a warning. If I start to talk about things that don’t make any sense, you have to call me up because the legal industry is a bit like medicine in that it kind of can get a bit sort of complicated in the way it structures itself. And there’s all kinds of little differences that you wouldn’t know or care about unless you’re part of it. But I’ll try and keep it at a high enough level that it it’s easy to follow. As you say, I finished school in 2012. I went to Macquarie University in 2013, and I did a double degree in Law and Business there, which I finished at the end of 2017. I was then, what’s called a tipstaff, which is kind of like a butler to a Supreme Court judge. It’s an apprenticeship of sorts where you basically follow the judge around for a year and you get their lunch for them. But you also sit in their room with them when they’re deciding cases, and you help them research and write memos for them and all of that kind of work. I did that for a year, straight out of uni, and then I was off to one of the big commercial law firms; one of what we call the top tier in Australia, which is as close as you can get to TV shows like ‘Suits’, notwithstanding the fact that they’re not very realistic. I was there for nearly three years and then I moved to a smaller firm; a specialised firm. I was there for a year and a half and and now I’m at the Bar. So in the ten years from since school, I’ve kind of spent five years at university and five years in practise as a solicitor and now I’m a barrister. I think most people who haven’t come in contact with the justice system probably don’t appreciate the difference between a barrister and a solicitor, and that’s not a problem. That’s probably a good thing for them. A barrister is essentially a lawyer who specialises in appearing in court. So we don’t do contract negotiations. We don’t do wills and things like that. We only argue cases when there’s a court case.
Paul Galea:
So the the barrister is the person who most people would be familiar with in terms of TV shows. They’re the ones that get up and speak and put forward arguments and ask questions and things like that.
Sebastian:
So, yeah, that’s right. In American TV shows they’re the trial attorney, and in English and Australian TV shows they’re the one in the wig.
Paul Galea:
Ok, well, I’ve got to ask that. Do you wear the wig?
Sebastian:
I do. It depends on the type of case, but yes, we do.
Paul Galea:
OK, now, one of the other things that I think you’ve been a little bit modest about is, and tell me if I’m wrong, because I’ve had quite a bit to do with lawyers and things over the years. But your journey in becoming a barrister from my experience, is quite a quick one. Would that be right?
Sebastian:
Yeah, it is. Being a barrister is, and there are a lot of different tortured analogies for it, but being a barrister is a little like going from being a sort of a general hospital doctor to choosing AAA surgery specialisation. And in that sense, the usual practise is that you would spend a bit of time as a solicitor first. And how much time you spend really depends on the person and the personality and also whether or not you can find a room in chambers to take you because you need to have your own chambers. As a barrister, you’re a sole trader. I’m definitely at the quick end of the spectrum. Some people go after having been a solicitor for twenty years, some after ten. And it used to be the case in the in the last century that some people would go straight out of university, but that’s definitely not the case anymore. So yeah, fair to say, I’m at the faster end of the range.
Paul Galea:
OK, very good now. That makes me think, because obviously, to be a barrister, you’ve got to be very confident with your public speaking and your ability to think on your feet. Did you do any of those things at school, like Mock Trial and debating or anything like that of sort thing? And then the other thing is, when did you decide you wanted to be a lawyer and a barrister? Where? So you can fill us all in on that stuff because I’m very interested in what motivates people.
Sebastian:
So when I was at school, I did debating, both in representing the school outside of it but also in all of our little internal House debates and things like that. I didn’t do Mock Trial. I don’t want to accuse anyone unnecessarily, but my recollection now is that I wasn’t allowed to be in the Mock Trial team because I was already a little bit too involved and too enthusiastic with debating. And I think everyone needed a chance to do something, and so you could not have one bloke doing everything himself. So I did debating, but not Mock Trial.
Paul Galea:
Good. So, you’ve obviously had some idea that you had certain skills with words and and able to put forward arguments. Is that when you started to think about maybe that the Law might have been something for you?
Sebastian:
Yeah, I think the Law is a kind of a first and attractive choice for people who like to read and like language but aren’t necessarily creative in the sense of wanting to say write creative writing or to be a journalist or something like that. It’s a good way to sort of exercise your brain, in a mathematical way, but with words rather than numbers. And, of course I’m terrible with numbers and Mr Nguyen, and I don’t know if he still teaches at the school, but he tried very hard with me all the way through school, and he got me through General Maths in Year 12, but that was about all he could manage.
Paul Galea:
So funny. He is still there, and I was talking to him just the other day, and he’s still hilarious. He’s a very, very entertaining man.
Sebastian:
Well, he worked very hard on me, and it came off in Year 12. I did quite well in General Maths in the HSC. But, I think we both had to work pretty hard!
Paul Galea:
Nice one. Actually, I think what really interests me there was the way that you put that; that the Law was like using words like numbers. That’s something that I haven’t heard before. And it actually makes really good sense to me so that you’re actually creating something with your words, but it’s very structured and methodical.
Sebastian:
Yeah, that’s right and I don’t want to labour the analogy too much, but it’s also like maths in the sense that you can put parts of an argument together, and they can add up. Or you can put parts of an argument together, and they can become greater than the sum of their parts. You can multiply them in a sense. Some lawyers would disagree with me but there can be a real mathematical sort of flavour to the way that argument is made.
Paul Galea:
OK, yeah, that fascinates me because I’ve never really thought of it that way. It’s a very, very good explanation of some of the stuff you do. So when did you know that you wanted to do Law and that was the way you wanted to go?
Sebastian:
Well, I think I decided that I wanted to study Law at about the end of Year 12 when we were doing the HSC, when we were waiting for our results. But I didn’t actually get into Law. I didn’t get into Law anywhere because, of course, the ATAR requirements are very high. Even at universities that aren’t in metropolitan Sydney nowadays, the ATAR requirements are very, very high. But I wasn’t deterred. I had heard from a friend that Macquarie University had a program where if you did a year of another degree first and you didn’t sort of muck it up too badly, they would then let you into the Law programme on a provisional basis. And then if you passed the first year of Law subjects on the provisional basis, they then let you in properly as a Law student. So I did a year of a Business Degree at Macquarie University in 2013 and then in 2014, I started picking up Law subjects and that’s the way that I worked it out. By the time it got to 2017, I had caught up so that I I didn’t even lose any time. The double degree is always five years, and it essentially worked out that I’d just done most of my Business Degree up front and then I did most of the Law Degree at the end, which works because the Law Degree can be a tough thing to do as a 19 or 20 year old. Even the one or two extra years out of school can make a big difference in terms of your ability to get through the amount of work that needs to be done and also to understand some of the concepts that are more rooted in common sense than anything. And common sense, of course, is something that you develop as you get older, a lot of the time.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, actually very interesting because my own son did exactly the same as you. He did a double degree and then switched over to Law in second year. And I think it’s amazing how many people do that. It just makes you wonder how many people of the people who get those gigantic ATARs actually last the course. Because it seems to me that nearly everyone I know or heard of has done a first year somewhere in some other degree, and then transferred over and gone on with it from there.
Sebastian:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Law schools are a very attritional place. The first year subjects these days have enormous numbers of students in them. I think at Macquarie University, first year Contract Law is something like 550 or 600 students but in my graduating cohort, there were 280 of us. So a lot of people fall off along the way. Partly I figure that’s because it takes a long time. Five years is a long time to be stuck at uni. The other thing is that people just figure out that it’s not for them along the way. Of course, the other thing about the Law is that a a lot of people have Law degrees, but never work as lawyers. Parliament House, in particular, is full of it, as are our various government departments. So it’s a degree that a lot of people do, but, not necessarily use in a strict sense.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, well, I mean, another one of the things that happens in these interviews is you talk to people who start their degree and then realise a little bit into it that maybe it’s not for them. But you didn’t have that issue once you started doing Law; you were pretty convinced that that was your go?
Sebastian:
That’s right. And I’m actually the odd one out, I think, of everyone I know. Of all the lawyers that I know and non-lawyers that I know, I’m the only person who woke up one morning when he was seventeen and decided that he wanted to be a barrister and then ten years later, had managed to line up all the ducks so that it actually happened. It’s been very good for me because I’ve never doubted what I wanted to do next. A lot of people finish uni, for example, and aren’t sure what they should now do with their degree or people who do the graduate programme at a law firm and realise that being a solicitor is not for them and they desperately need to find something else to do with themselves. I consider myself very, very fortunate that I’ve kind of just always had a sense that it’s what I want to do and that as I’ve taken each successive step, it’s managed to pay off.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, because as I say, most people go on their journeys that are very, very winding and circuitous . And yours is like basically directly go from A to B, which is very good. I’m also wondering about your year working with the judge. Was that something that was a bit inspirational? And helped you to decide that the Law was where you wanted to be? Or was that just something that you did to get a bit of money in between?
Sebastian:
No, it it definitely wasn’t for the money! I can tell you that it’s got to be the the worst paying graduate job you can have in New South Wales. Working for a judge? I don’t know why. It just seems to have fallen through the cracks at the paymaster’s office for the New South Wales government. I’m not sure, but, it was a job that was sold to me when I was at uni, as being really the perfect opportunity to get yourself into a courtroom and to see what actually happens and how decisions are made and to see how different barristers conduct themselves and what the judges think of that, and in that respect, it was a phenomenal opportunity. It was. I got to see; in a year I got to see so many days of different barristers in different kinds of cases, with all their own idiosyncratic ways of arguing them. And I got to choose from my high perch, sitting up on the bench next to the judge, which of them I liked and which of them I didn’t. And then I got to hear from the judge whether my judge, whether my views were right or not, whether I was right to say that, to think that so and so wasn’t doing a very good job. Or was and I was very often wrong, of course. But it was a really valuable insight.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, and obviously, from testing yourself and then finding out what you got right? And what you got wrong? You improve your understanding of what it was all about. Sounds like a fantastic apprenticeship.
Sebastian:
It is. I use the word apprenticeship quite deliberately, because it really is. I don’t think anyone else really describes it as an apprenticeship, but it is kind of that classic example of you go to some master craftsman; in this case, a judge, and you just sit in their room with them and you just help them on an ad hoc basis. There’s no sort of formal structured training program or whatever. You’re just there in the room with them while they go about their business and you learn that way, naturally.
Paul Galea:
And obviously it helps if you’ve got a good judge, someone who’s your mentor.
Sebastian:
And I was incredibly lucky. The judge that I worked for was the first in a series of really good mentors that I’ve had in my career so far. And the judge that I worked for made a particular point of hiring young law graduates who did want to be barristers one day, because he took the view that it was an opportunity for him to give a young person who wanted to do that an opportunity to see what it was all about. And so he paid a lot of attention to me and making sure that I understood what was going on. And I understood why things were good and why things were bad and when things were going well and when they weren’t.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, that’s a really, really valuable thing to have mentors looking after you in those formative years of your new career. Absolutely fantastic. Alright, mate. Well, I find that really unusual for my interviews. But it’s also really good because, as I said, most of the journeys are pretty roundabout now. Speaking of journeys, you went to IGS from Year 7 to Year 12. Any happy memories there; any things that stick out for you?
Sebastian:
Yeah, I had a great time at school. I had an even better time at university in the end, but I really, over the course of being at school, sort of got my speed up so that I hit university at pace. But yeah, many happy memories. I was never particularly arty or musical, so things like ArtsFest, which I know capture a lot of people’s memories aren’t that high on my list. My fondest memories are particularly in Year 11 and 12, where we had a relatively small year group. I think there were 98 or 99 of us, something like that. And we were all mates. I mean, people had their own little circles, but everyone was friendly to one another. And, I only see a few of them still now, but my memories are of being in the Common Room together and getting through it all together and having very good relationships with the teachers as well. Less formal, I guess, than you might expect; we got on really well with our teachers.
Paul Galea:
You know, it’s it’s just crazy how many people say those two things! That relationship with your cohort in Year 11 and 12 and the relationship with the teachers, particularly in those senior years. Man, it just keeps coming up every time. So obviously, there’s something going right there, that’s for sure, because people ten and fifteen years later, all talk about those things. Wow, that’s good to hear, mate. You’re, about to be-well, you are a successful barrister. You are. You’ve made your way in the world in a very successful way. A lot of our students listen to these interviews. Have you got any advice for them that you would like to impart and, you know, give them some ideas about the ways to help them make their way in that big wide world?
Sebastian:
Yeah, I think two things for people who are thinking about what they want to do at university or I mean are just starting at university. I think it’s important to remember that you don’t have your degree, whatever specific degree it is, until you finish. And in the time between, when you start university and when you graduate, you can really do whatever you like and come naturally to a conclusion that matches what you’re interested in. And by that I mean, you can do a year of one thing and then a year of another and then a year of a third thing and decide out of those three things what you like or whatever the case may be. And so you don’t have to feel locked in from when you first accept the offer that that’s what you’re going to do. That’s the next three or four or five years of your life, and that’s what you’re going to finish with. And that’s what you’re going to be because it’s just not the case. Particularly if you’re in the Humanities, where the programs and study that the universities are organised around are very flexible. So that’s the first thing. And the second thing then is I think everyone in their twenties, whatever point in their twenties, needs to find at least one really good mentor because having a good mentor just makes an immeasurable difference to not only your career, but also to your life. Generally having someone that you know has your back and will look out for you and will give you advice that you can trust. Someone that you can look up to and use as a model if they’re in the same industry that you’re in or want to be in. But they don’t have to be necessarily in the same industry. Certainly the Law is its own little closed thing. So if you if you’re a young person who wants to be a lawyer, having mentors who are lawyers is probably ideal. But I really I cannot understate how much I have benefited from having a couple of people; just two or three in my corner all the time. And they’ve been wonderful to me, and one of the things that I very much look forward to later in life when I can do it and people will take me seriously, is having those relationships with people younger than me as well.
Paul Galea:
Ok, I want to ask you a question because I hear what you’re saying and I agree a million percent. But just say I’m a young person and you’re telling me, “Oh, get a mentor.” Give us some ideas about how one goes about getting a mentor. Just maybe even tell us about how you went about getting your mentors.
Sebastian:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think the first thing is you have to identify someone that you look up to for for one reason or another, either because they’re doing what you want to do in the future or they’re particularly impressive in one way or another. And the second thing you need to do then, is to ask them. Not necessarily ask them directly, “Will you be my mentor?” but try and involve yourself with them in some way, whether that’s working for them if it’s an employment situation or if it’s having a coffee and a chat with them, or if it’s doing a subject that they lecture in, if it’s at a university or something like that. And I think that the thing too that maybe people might be a bit sceptical about is that; and I mean, this is true in the law at least, and I imagine it’s true in other professions, people want to be mentors. I think if you show genuine interest in something that a person who is more senior than you are doing, they will take that on without scepticism and will want to involve you, even if it’s just in the occasional sort of chat over a coffee . People, I have found, are very willing to give up their time and their energy to help people who are younger than them or coming up after them because there’s a kind of a … Well, I don’t know. I mean, there could be lots of reasons why people do it, but my experience has been that people have always been very generous with their time, and so the best thing to do once you’ve discovered a person that you look up to is just to ask.
Paul Galea:
Well, I can tell you I’ve been a mentor to a lot of people over the years – students and young people becoming teachers and things because I’m very old now. I know that the pay off for the mentor is that it is very, very satisfying and fulfilling to see someone younger than you developing and succeeding and thinking that you have a small part to play in helping them to achieve that. That’s a really wonderful, reward in itself. So I think your idea of people reaching out to older people to see whether they can become mentors is a fantastic one. And I think it’s got massive advantage and massive merit.
Sebastian:
Yeah, I think so. Just by way of example, one of my mentors is a former employer of mine, and he’s still a part of my career, even though I don’t work for him anymore. It’s simply because when I took another opportunity somewhere else, I just kept in touch with him and if I had a problem, I would ask him for his advice or I would ask to catch up with him and have a coffee or have some lunch or something like that. And in doing that, you just keep that connection alive. And you keep that avenue open to yourself to ask questions, to learn more, learn things that you didn’t have the chance to learn while you worked for them or whatever it may be. And that’s been really valuable for me.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, it always comes down to relationships and communication. I think that, you know, if you can maintain those with people and then you can build that relationship, particularly that mentor/mentee relationship, it is so valuable and provides such good advice for our young people. It has been really very, very illuminating talking to you. Again, I say to you, congratulations on your career to date and also thank you very much for talking to me and hopefully, at some stage we’ll get together and maybe have a coffee or a beer at one of those reunions that I’m trying to organise.
Sebastian:
Absolutely. I’d really like that. And I think it’s probably only appropriate that my final remark is to say that if you’ve got any students in Year 11 and 12 who are interested in studying Law, they should absolutely get in touch with me because I’m not so far removed from university yet that I’ve forgotten what it’s like. So I’d be more than happy to talk to anyone who wants to know more.
Paul Galea:
That’s very kind of you, mate. I really appreciate it, Seb. Take it easy, mate. And, speak soon.
Sebastian:
Thanks, Paul. Cheers.
