Freehills is proud of their alumni.

For more than 150 years, Freehills has developed an unparalleled reputation for delivering commercial legal advice of the highest standard in the Australasian region. We are known for our depth of expertise and talent in a wide range of areas. For this and other reasons, our people are highly sought after and have ventured on to many diverse career paths, both locally and around the world.

We invite you to be part of Freehills’ Alumni Program.

The Freehills Alumni Program is open to all former Freehills professionals. The program provides members with the opportunity to stay in touch with former colleagues and connects alumni to an invaluable personal and professional network around the world. Members of the program receive regular Alumni Updates as well as invitations to a range of exclusive social and professional networking events.

Register for the Freehills Alumni Program

You can check and update your details by emailing freehills.alumni@freehills.com.

Stephanie Pursley

October 2008

Since leaving Freehills, former partner Stephanie Pursley has embarked on an amazing venture in New Zealand. She is the owner of Tiritiri Lodge at Wanaka on the South Island. We caught up with Stephanie to talk to her about changing careers and countries.

As the owner of a beautiful six-room lodge on Lake Wanaka, what does a normal day entail?

It’s an early start particularly in winter with skiers. I’ve got the help of my partner Denis and our chef, my daughter Tiffany. For the last two weeks it has been a full house and we provide a full breakfast. We do everything from home-baked pastries to freshly squeezed juice and ricotta hotcakes. There are many other things to do in a day including managing the bookings, looking at emails and paying accounts. I don’t have someone helping me every day so there are certain amounts of washing, ironing and cleaning to be done. There are also the little things like getting fruit, flowers and chocolates throughout the lodge.

Even a busy day is a really enjoyable day. In the afternoon we prepare appetisers for the guests. When guests come in of an evening we sit down with them for drinks and appetisers, and if they are eating in, dinner. It’s quite a long day when we do breakfast then dinner. The people skills I acquired at Freehills have helped a great deal.

What’s enjoyable about your new role?

I get to meet a lot of wonderful, interesting people. I’ve had some people I’ve worked opposite in big matters come and stay as guests. I’ve also met so many fascinating people from all over the world.

How is working at Tiritiri Lodge different from working at Freehills?

It’s amazing how you develop all sorts of skills at Freehills. A lot of the skills I learnt at Freehills have transferred over to here. I now run the website myself and I publish content. You have got to have really good computer skills to do this. The Excel skills from my previous career are used for running accounts and booking-in guests. I use the business skills I learnt at Freehills all the time.

Do you have a most memorable lesson from your time at Freehills?

Honestly, it’s phenomenal when I think about my time at Freehills. I think it’s only sometimes in retrospect that you realise just how much you learn. I learnt a variety of things because of the length of my career. I had the opportunity to do all sorts of different things. That’s why it’s such a great place.

So where do you see the lodge going or the next big thing you’re going to do?

We would actually like to extend. The one thing we didn’t anticipate was the high demand for the suite. We’ve only got one suite and five guest rooms. We did that deliberately because we’ve got so many different living areas in the lodge that we didn’t want people to be stuck in their own room. We wanted them to be part of the hosted experience. We’d like to buy the block of land next door and build a couple more suites if it goes well enough. We all love running the lodge. My daughter, who is 32, has retrained as a chef and just loves living in Wanaka. All the guests love her cooking. It has been a really good transition for all of us.

What have been some new skills you have developed from running the lodge?

It’s all the skills I’ve developed over the years that are now so useful. We had one guest who had really antiquated ideas about women. When he would ask a question about New Zealand and I would start to answer, he would just look right through me and focus on Denis. The cultural difference course I did at Freehills was very helpful here. I sat myself down in a corner and gave myself that lecture again! Most of the guests are very, very nice but you just have to remember there are different mindsets. At Freehills I took a course run by McKinsey called Chrysalis which taught me to put myself in the shoes of the person you are dealing with and think from their perspective. That was a most valuable learning.

Detail is also so very important. The first 60 seconds are vital. We greet people on the driveway when they arrive. If you make people feel comfortable and welcomed, they will relax and it will be really easy to make them happy after that. If you get off to a bad start you have got to work terribly hard to pull it back.

What do you get up to when you are not at work?

I love skiing and cross-country skiing. I’m learning cross-country skiing so I try and get out there once a week and downhill once a week in winter. I’ve got a garden here and I’m really enjoying having a cold-climate garden. I’ve planted a lot of bulbs and I can’t wait for spring until they come up. In summer I love swimming in the lake and walks in the mountains because I’m crazy about mountains. They are the reason why I’m here.

Mike Ferraro

22 November 2007

After 16 years, Freehills has farewelled one of its standout people, Mike Ferraro, who departed the firm at the end of 2007 to take up the chief legal counsel position at BHP Billiton.

With an accomplished Freehills career spanning a wide range of areas, Mike says it is with mixed emotions that he says goodbye to Freehills.

‘I am going to a fantastic role with many opportunities and challenges but I am leaving a lot behind at Freehills. I’ve made great friends and worked with great people, and I will miss the relationships I have formed,’ says Mike.

For Mike, the opportunity to have ‘more than one career’ with the firm is a highlight of his time with Freehills. During his 16 years, Mike has moved from a senior lawyer to a partner involved in direct work and client relationships, then to having a greater focus on establishing and developing client relationships. He then moved to practice group management roles before becoming Managing Partner, Clients in July 2005.

As Managing Partner, Clients, Mike says he is proud of a number of his achievements, including his work in the Active Client Program.

‘Assisting the ongoing development of the active client program has been pretty important and valuable. Also assisting partners with broadening specific client relationships and the approach I took to managing client conflicts within the firm, to try and deal with them in a proactive way rather than as problems that we need to fix,’ Mike says.

‘The other area I am quite proud about – but it is still a work in process – is our knowledge management initiative and in particular the Know-how Guides which will be rolled out over the next few months,’ he adds. But while he will miss the people and activity of Freehills, Mike is also looking forward to his next challenge. With a legal group broadly spread across 15 locations globally, managing legal practice systems and processes will take on an international edge for Mike.

‘The opportunity to engage and share best knowledge with 70-odd lawyers spread around the world will be a challenge, as will be getting an understanding of the business as quickly as possible. The mining sector will certainly be a challenge but also very interesting and that part I particularly enjoy – learning as much as I can about the business,’ says Mike.

Mike also acknowledges that when he begins his new role at BHP Billiton, he will be taking many skills learned and developed through his Freehills career including strong client service skills which he says will hold him in ‘good stead’. Equally important are the people focus, experience in developing programs relating to people engagement, vision, and strategies, and managing a large organisation, he says.

But Mike won’t be forgetting his Freehills friends and colleagues any time soon.

‘I’m looking forward to staying in touch with the people at Freehills from a relationship perspective because having spent over 16 years here, it would be sad if all those connections are broken,’ says Mike.

And for his parting words, Mike says it has been an honour to have been a part of the firm for over 16 years.

‘It’s something that I never take for granted. Freehills has become a very successful law firm and I’ve been very proud to have been part of it and to have worked with some wonderful people. I will miss the camaraderie, the friendships, the relationships, the expertise and the general feel of a very successful organisation – I’m hoping that all that will be waiting for me and replicated in my new role at BHP Billiton,’ he says.

Sally Capp

22 November 2007

We were recently fortunate to have Sally Capp, formerly of our Perth office, speak at our Women in Business Pink Ribbon Breakfast, and Sally subsequently agreed to be interviewed for our Alumni Update.

We were most interested to understand how Sally’s career progression has unfolded, as it has been a fascinating and diverse path to her current role as CEO of the Committee for Melbourne.

Sally started her working life as a solicitor in commercial law and practiced for 10 years, the last four of which were in Perth where she specialised in mergers and acquisitions. In 2000, Sally established and then floated an ASX listed investment bank. Sally has also acted on a number of ASX-listed and public company boards.

In January 2004, Sally returned to Melbourne and became a senior executive at ANZ Bank working directly with John McFarlane on ANZ group issues as Head of the Office of CEO and then as a corporate banker.

Also in January 2004, Sally became a director of the Collingwood Football Club, the first female board director in the 112-year history of the club. In 2006, Sally became a Trustee of the National Breast Cancer Foundation and joined the Golf Australia Foundation.

For the past 12 months, Sally has founded and operated a small private equity fund investing in, and growing private companies.

In 2002, Sally was recognised as one of the leading business people in Western Australia under 40 years of age by winning one of the inaugural ‘40 under 40 Awards’ and was the 2002 Western Australia winner of the Telstra Business Womens’ Awards for the Private and Corporate Sector. In 2003, Sally was a judge in the Western Region of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards and included in BRW’s list of 20 female rising stars in business.

Sally manages to balance the demands of her career with those of a family. Sally and her husband, Andrew Sutherland, have two sons—Nicholas (9) and William (7).

Sally Capp shares her philosophy on career paths with us:

Making a change in your career can be daunting and a difficult decision to make. Why? Because the known is more easily understood and calculated and the unknown is potentially risky and could have dramatic effects on the lifestyle you have established.

SO WHAT!

Okay, there are some fundamentals in your life that need to be protected in terms of being able to pay the rent and feed yourself, partner, kids and pets (not necessarily in that order) however other than that, you have some valuable skills and experience that can and should be leveraged to try new things…and this may even mean a change in your current role.

As you can see, I have changed the course of my career many times from law to private equity to banking to a non-profit think tank. This has involved legal skills, to analytical and negotiating skills to strategic and risk assessment skills to influencing skills and all the while doing this in medium, big, small, enormous and tiny work environments. Most of the skills I have developed on the job and all of the experience I have definitely learned on the job mostly from my mistakes!

How have I been able to divert my career path so often despite having husband, mortgage, two kids and thankfully no pets since the fish died?

There are a three important attitudes that I have developed along the way that have shaped and supported my ability to make career moves:

• I am happy to take risks: mostly because I know that if it came to it I would be happy to flip burgers at the local hamburger joint if I had to, to get by and if I was really desperate I could return to the law to earn a buck so what have I got to lose…really (returning to the law would be a fabulous option I was only joking before!).
•  Back yourself: go on, have a go and believe that you can do it. You may not fill every criteria that is advertised with your dream role but you know you’ll work hard to overcome those deficiencies, you know you have the interest and enthusiasm for the job, you know you are going to give it your best go and all of these things add up to passion which counts a lot when you are going for new roles. There is no perfect person for every role out there and if you want it back yourself and go for it…if you don’t believe you can do then no-one else will.
•  It is okay to make mistakes: really it is; what is the worst that can happen? Humiliation, shame, embarrassment, mortification, having to admit that you were wrong? These things are not so bad, trust me, my experience has shown that these outcomes are not fatal! I have found that there is more respect for those who have tried and failed miserably than those who did not try at all. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I have learned far more from my mistakes and believe that while at times mistakes can be painful they have been a good 'investment'. Okay, none of us want financial ruin but with a threshold in place that you know you cannot cross for fear of financial ruin, I am sure you will find there is still plenty of room to 'play' with your career.

Fancy seeing you here! – London

October 2008

Alumni in the UK converged at The Light Bar & Restaurant for the annual Freehills London Alumni cocktail party.

Proving that the Freehills network is alive and strong, over 90 alumni enjoyed catching -up with former colleagues and friends and hearing about what’s been happening at the firm from visiting partners Jason Ricketts, Martin Shakinovsky, Chris Robertson and Mark Rigotti.

The London cocktail party is held every October and is a great opportunity for UK-based alumni to reconnect with Freehills. Make sure your details are up-to-date so you don’t miss out on an invitation. Email freehills.alumni@freehills.com

The Freehills Alumni Program is open to all former Freehills professionals. If you have suggestions, comments or questions about the Program, contact: 
 

Jessica Deery Alumni Relations and Senior Networking Consultant Direct +61 3 9288 1706 Fax + 61 3 288 1567 jessica.deery@freehills.com