Barrister

Samara Wakefield: I will tell you, being a lawyer is not anything like 'Suits'. You don't just fall into it because you found a suitcase of money. But there are aspects of it that are actually true.

My name is Samara Wakefield and I am a lawyer at a litigation firm in Auckland.

It's off to court I go.

A brief description of what I do - helping clients resolve disputes in court. So today what my day looks like is I'll be researching and finalising some documents and then I'll be heading to court this afternoon.

A career in law requires a law degree, which is a lot of reading, a lot of reading, a lot of reading. And if you wanna be a practising lawyer, you also have to go to something called 'profs'.

After university, I was adamant I didn't want to be a lawyer. I was, I was done. I did profs and I loved it. I loved it so much and I knew I wanted to be a lawyer, so I flipped. Flipped, totally flipped the script and went into law.

Time for court. I need to carry this briefcase because there's so many documents that we need to take up to court; pens, pieces of paper to write notes and post-it notes. You can't forget post-it notes. These robes are tradition to wear in the high court and for admission ceremonies. In the district court you don't need to wear them. But in the high court, definitely.

The difference between a high court and a district court is that the district court is usually the first place that matters go. And then they come to the high court. But if they're really serious, the high court comes first.

This is the Auckland High Court. Over there is the newer part. Over here is the more exciting one. This is courtroom 1, and inside they had a trap door where they used to go down and get the defendants from. It's so exciting.

I chose my career in law because my career advisor told me about it, to be frank. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I went to my careers advisor and said, "please help". And she said, "Okay, let's look at your papers. What are you doing? It's very English heavy". I took English, geography, history, drama. And she said, "How about a law and English degree?"

And then here I am. I have a lot of advice that I could give, but I think the one piece that I would give to anyone considering a career in law: take your time. This is not a career that you kind of just fall into and then it just takes care of itself. You really have to take steps and be active throughout the whole time. It's really hard to stay committed to something you're not interested in. Really think about what it is about the law that you like and whether you can persevere with it. And once you can, you'll just soar.