King & Wood Mallesons Graduate Program

Our Graduate Program

Generally, we make most of our Graduate hires from our vacation clerkship cohorts. By the time you join as a Graduate, you will have a real sense of what it is like to be a lawyer at King & Wood Mallesons. Stepping into KWM as a Graduate means stepping into an extraordinary period of development in your life.

Our graduates complete 6 month rotations across 3 different practice areas. Our graduates also participate in a targeted development program through a framework that cultivates valuable skills and that sets them up for success now and in the future. 

The program provides a practical business foundation for junior lawyers. You’ll receive:

• Meaningful work covering a wide range of practice areas;
• Client contact and an in-depth understanding of how they operate in a commercial and regulatory environment;
• The opportunity to work with a range of partners, senior associates and solicitors in different practice groups;
• A practical understanding of areas of our legal practice; and
• A comprehensive knowledge of the firm, our technology, our resources, our processes and, of course, the people you’ll work with.

As part of the Graduate Program, we also offer a Practical Legal Training (PLT) course with the College of Law to our Australian Law Graduates, ensuring that you meet the requirements for admission to legal practice.

At King & Wood Mallesons we adopt a holistic "70/20/10" learning philosophy. This means that we encourage an integrated approach to learning, where you build capability through a range of “formal” and “informal” learning experiences, ranging from day-to-day work activities, through to the more traditional face to face learning programs.

The program also promotes and supports the mobility of our staff across our offices by giving you the opportunity to apply to go on exchange in one of our interstate or overseas offices. Through this, you are able to access a greater choice and variety of destinations and on-the-job experience.

King & Wood Mallesons distinguishes itself from other top tier law firms in the way we grow market leaders. We recruit high achieving, client centric, learning agile people with an international perspective. We understand that technical excellence is only one success factor. We value a range of skills in our employees and recognise that a diversity of strengths leads to best results. We are looking for people who have an intellectual curiosity and are intrinsically motivated. Excellent marks are not necessarily a predictor of career success.

• Are you empathetic? Can you stand in the shoes of our client and experience the problem from their perspective?
• Is it more important to you to admire the problem or are you most interested in providing a practical, efficient and commercially sound solution?
• Are you traditional and risk averse or are you excited by a changing and fluid work environment?
• When you think about your career are you only focused on Australia, or do you appreciate that Australia’s closest neighbours are the new power houses of the global economy?

We believe in team work and the ‘Power of Together’. We are not a collection of siloed practices, but work closely across the network to pursue client opportunities. Through a high performance culture our results are realised through collaboration, innovation and engagement.