Pursuing purposeful careers in commercial law

Jennifer Hutton began her legal career with a UK firm that specialised in legal aid where she worked on mental health, family law and child care matters. “My very first experience of law was representing people who had been sectioned in psychiatric hospitals,” Hutton says.

“I worked very closely with a lot of domestic violence charities, and I would rush off to court to get urgent injunctions. When I was a young lawyer, that’s really what I wanted to do, and I loved it.”

But it wasn’t until Hutton moved to Sydney and transitioned to commercial law that she began to derive a true sense of purpose from her legal career. “I was getting burnt out, and when I came to Australia and I had the opportunity to requalify. I ended up working in disputes and litigation and environmental planning law. It was exciting for me to learn new areas of law, and I loved the legal challenge of it. I didn’t want to go back to doing the family law work,” she explains.

Fifteen years later, Hutton is a partner specialising in dispute resolution and insolvency at Henry William Lawyers. She says her work aligns closely with her core value of lifelong learning and also allows her to support and mentor women in the law.

“You can find purpose in any area of law by looking at what matters to you and making sure that you embody that in how you practice law or how you meet those value needs,” Hutton says.

Commercial law is sometimes perceived as being at odds with purpose-driven work, but there’s growing recognition that the two needn’t be mutually exclusive. For many practitioners, purpose is deeply subjective. It might mean supporting clients through difficult circumstances or resolving disputes. For others, it could involve helping businesses innovate, learning new skills, mentoring juniors or running a firm.

In pursuit of purpose

Gen Z practitioners – born between 1995 and 2009 and set to form the largest generation in the workforce by 2035 – are at the forefront of reshaping what purpose means in commercial practice. Among this cohort, deriving a sense of meaning from work is one of the top reasons to work for an organisation, according to a 2024 International Bar Association report on Gen Z career attitudes. While a desire to address social, environmental and ethical issues is common, there is a broader push to define work on one’s own terms and pursue careers that feel personally meaningful.

“These days, people are less likely to do a job just because it’s a job,” says Abby Adams, who completed McCabes’ graduate program in early 2025 and is now a lawyer in the firm’s litigation and dispute resolution team.

“More and more people, especially the people I’ve grown up with and gone through uni with, are not just going to do something because it’s what they’re told is a good job or going to make them money. Finding purpose is a really big thing.”

Adams says “figuring out how you can interpret and use the law to get the best outcome for clients” is what gives her early career meaning. “Clients, especially in commercial law, come to you with a variety of different issues and taking the time to understand the client, what they want and then being their advisor in how they can navigate their issues brings me a sense of purpose,” she explains.

“The law is obviously everywhere in our world and something that I’ve found a lot of purpose in is being a person who can understand it and help others understand it. Working in an area where you’re intellectually challenged has always been very important to me,” Adams adds.

It’s not only younger practitioners who are pursuing purposeful careers. More than 90 per cent of legal professionals derive a “significant sense of professional purpose” from their work, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters of lawyers from more than 60 countries, including Australia.

Dimity Brown, an executive coach to lawyers, says there has been a noticeable change in the number of lawyers seeking purpose outside of traditional pathways like climbing the corporate ladder or earning a high income. “There’s a whole heap of cultural shifts that have created this dynamic where people realise that making money and becoming a professional is not the be all and end all,” she explains.

Hutton notes a similar pattern, observing that lawyers are increasingly defining success beyond conventional markers like title or seniority. “People are looking for something that fits their lives more, whereas in the past they might have gotten meaning from their title – ‘I’m a lawyer’, or ‘I’m a partner’, or whatever it might be. That sense of identity isn’t as strong anymore.”

To each their own

Perhaps the biggest takeaway for many practitioners is the realisation that the pursuit of purpose is an individual exercise driven by intrinsic motivators. So it’s perhaps no surprise that what feels meaningful in a legal career varies from one lawyer to the next.

Dr Rachel Setti, an organisational psychologist and executive coach, says tuning in to “what it is that puts you in flow” is a key step in understanding what drives meaningful work. “As a commercial lawyer, you can go in so many different directions, and it’s about asking yourself: What sort of problems do I enjoy solving? What impact do I want to have in my career? When I look back on my career, what do I want to have contributed?” she says.

Especially for lawyers still trying to identify what gives their work meaning, Dr Setti says it can help to reflect on what aspects of a role feel most energising and “make you want to get out of bed in the morning”.

“It could be that you’re not really enjoying the content of your role – it’s a bit dry and repetitive – but what you really love is collaborating with colleagues or helping clients solve really complex problems that they’ve been grappling with for a long time,” Setti says. “In those moments, you’re happy in your job – so capitalise on them. It’s important information to help you move towards a more purposeful career for yourself.”

She says purpose is often built from these smaller signals over time, rather than discovered all at once, particularly in the early years of practice.

For Ian Aldridge, experience working in small suburban firms and large international outfits, including a stint in London, helped him identify what he most enjoys about working in the law. “I’ve always found that the closer you’re working with clients, the more interaction you have with clients, the more fulfilling the work is – because at the end of the day, lawyers generally get into law to help people,” he says.

After returning from London, Aldridge started Progressive Legal in 2014. The firm, which now employs 15 people, specialises in small business, providing advice on corporate structures, intellectual property protection, tailored commercial legal documents and dispute resolution.

“When I came back, the option was to go back into a mid-tier or larger firm, but I felt I’d climbed that ladder as much as I wanted to. I reflected on when I was happiest in law, and that was when I was working for small business,” Aldridge says. “I decided to start my own firm because I found enough business owners putting pieces of paper under my nose, saying, ‘What do you make of this?’”

He believes a purposeful career comprises a “trifecta” of a supportive working environment, interesting and diverse work, and clients who value and act on advice while providing constructive feedback.

That sense of meaning, Brown says, can also emerge in less obvious ways and doesn’t need to be tied to overtly altruistic goals. “You can find purpose in all sorts of weird and wonderful places – the building of a career, becoming a leader. One might not necessarily think that somebody who’s pushing for partnership in a top-tier law firm has found purpose, but it is possible that they have found purpose in building a business,” she says.

Dr Setti agrees, adding that more traditional ambitions, such as earning a salary that enables someone to support their family or pursue meaningful goals outside work, can be just as purposeful. “There’s no right or wrong in terms of finding a purposeful career.”

Finding unexpected purpose

Sometimes, finding purpose is more about a mindset shift than a change of professional circumstances. Reframing how one perceives and experiences their work so that it better aligns with their values and interests is what’s called ‘cognitive job crafting’.

“When we’re in a role that we’re having second thoughts about, it can feel like the only way a meaningful change is going to occur is if we leave the job or find a new role or move to a new career, but sometimes what can be really impactful is changing the way we view our current situation,” Dr Setti says, explaining that one approach is to look beyond billable hours or routine tasks and focus instead on the broader impact of legal work and what it helps make possible.

“It might be that it enables you to do other things in your life that feel rewarding. All you’ve done there is shift your thinking, and that can create huge change in and of itself,” Setti adds.

Brown says purpose can be found in how lawyers engage with different parts of their work, rather than changing roles altogether. “You might be a personal injury lawyer and not necessarily attracted to certain elements of personal injury law, but you really enjoy the excitement of litigation – that is the thing that gives you the purpose,” she explains. “If you can find purpose in an unexpected place, that is a good thing.”

She says this sort of flexible approach is why many lawyers are able to stay in the profession long-term, even if their original expectations of legal practice evolve over time.

Indeed, the search for purpose might be an individual pursuit, but it can have profession-wide benefits. Hutton says lawyers who “genuinely care about what they’re doing” are more well-rounded, which “benefits everybody because the law exists to serve clients and the broader community, and that works best when practitioners are engaged in their work”.

She adds that finding a sense of purpose may also help retain lawyers in the profession. “A lot of people perhaps leave the law because something doesn’t add up with it. The more that people are talking about how you get that purpose and how you find that enjoyment and that fulfillment, it might help people be happier in this profession for a longer time.”