What's your job about?
Dentons is a global law firm with offices in Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand. I work in a tech, media, telecommunications, privacy, consumer and data team. While our team is quite specialised, we also pick up a wide range of niche jobs that come to our desks. This means that no day is ever the same.
Because we are a commercial law firm, we tend to help companies when they want to sell a product. Say for example, a company wants to make Back to the Future Part II happen by inventing an off-the-ground hoverboard. The different ways our team may help with this include the following:
Because Dentons is a global law firm, we often get overseas companies that are already established and selling their products locally. They come to us when they want to bring their products to New Zealand and want our advice in understanding how their products may be regulated under New Zealand law.
What's your background?
I was born in Haifa and moved to Tāmaki Makaurau when I was four years old with my parents and older brother. I have lived here ever since. My Dad’s side is from Morocco and my Mum’s side is from Eastern Europe (though she was born in Nigeria).
My Jewish identity is a core part of who I am and has shaped a lot of my experiences growing up. There are only about 6,000 Jewish people in New Zealand – so feeling connected to Judaism has to be more of an intentional decision if we want to have a relationship with it. Growing up, I felt most connected to my Judaism through being involved in a Jewish youth movement. This helped me connect to other Jewish people and learn more about Jewish history, values and expressions. In 2017, I went on a gap year programme with this youth movement which was filled with experiental learning to prepare us to lead our youth movements when we returned to our respective countries. As part of this, I lived with 18 people in a house, most of whom were Australian. I spent the year working in a kindergarten with 2 year olds in a kibbutz (collective community/village) in the desert, working in an community centre in Yafo, attending seminars, going to Poland to learn about the Jewish history there, and a bunch of other stuff. When I came back to New Zealand, I was involved in leading the youth movement that I grew up in (and was its chairperson during Level 4 lockdown – which had its own unique challenges). I did this alongside my psych, politics and law studies.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, absolutely. The most useful thing I learnt from law school is legal thinking. This didn’t come naturally for me at all and is something that I had to work on and improve over time. Just like how you can learn another language, I think that anyone can learn to think like a lawyer. Going through my legal studies and working in a legal environment is what has helped me develop this most.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The thing I find most exciting about my job is that I get to work on new technological developments that companies are wanting to bring to New Zealand. I think it’s exciting to see where the world is heading tech-wise, so I feel quite lucky that I get to have a role in some new things that are coming!
What are the limitations of your job?
A limitation of my job is that the work I do is not always consistent. As mentioned above, no two days are ever the same for me or my team. Because our team captures a lot of niche areas of law, we cannot predict the type of work we will be getting on any given day. This makes it challenging for me to know what a day is going to look like before I arrive at work. The effect of this is that I never know when I am going to be super quiet or super busy – which pushes me to maximise my time when it is quiet.
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