This is the transcript for Interested in combining your Law degree with the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation?
My name is Megha. I’m in my third year of studying a combined Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of creative intelligence and innovation.
My background and sort of what school I went to like based in Western Sydney, so I was like born and raised there. I went to Penrith selective High School, in terms of what subjects I enjoyed and what I liked. I personally wasn’t a big fan of science and maths. I was really interested in the humanity side. So I studied a lot of history, I did both ancient and modern history, I did society and culture and legal studies. Personally, I really enjoyed Legal Studies and that’s what led me to pursue law in University.
To be completely honest, I actually hadn’t decided what I was going to study with my law degree up until the really last minute. So that was like options day. And I was going around to the different booths at the stalls. And I had received a really convincing elevator pitch from the BCII stall. And as I was going through the pitch, and I was as I was listening, I realised that this degree is so different. And looking back I thought to myself, I was like, it’s so wonderfully wacky that I’d be doing myself a disadvantage for not choosing it. And at the end of the day, the driving factor for me to choose it was the fact that I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be different from all the 10s of Thousands of law students that are graduating across the state. And I knew the technical skills would make me ready to enter the workforce. I would get that from my law degree, but it was the soft skills that I wanted to improve on, I wanted to develop. And BCII really would make that happen for me, like its entire degree based in collaboration, problem solving, and BCII in itself really embodied that for me.
Words I would describe BCII with are – re-imaginative, transformative and one specific BCII word is – chaordic.
It’s improved my confidence. So that constant collaboration, teamwork and liaising with a bunch of people from different disciplines, has really given me the ability to voice my opinions and engage in feedback. And I’ve been able to take that same confidence and apply it in a law degree setting. So that would be, you know, feeling confident to articulate my ideas and class discussions, participating in law competitions from mooting to client interview and negotiation. BCII has really given me those soft skills to really believe in myself and my self confidence.
BCII has made me think differently about my core degree is especially relevant in terms of the extra curricula I do throughout my law degree. So that would be the various competitions such as mooting, witness examination, and in those situations, it’s really integral to think different to think in a way that your opponent wouldn’t think about, you know, have a range of different arguments that take different perspectives. And what BCII taught me is those skills essentially, you know, we’re not thinking inside the box, it’s really taking all your assumptions that you know about that specific problem or your client, putting a little box stepping outside of it, and just viewing it from that perspective. And it really gives you an advantage when you know your opponent is really is only doing a law degree and they’ve really been trained in a specific way. And this BCII allows me to provide a different perspective to you know, I guess client briefs.
Why I think it’s important to learn transdisciplinary skills in my area. So essentially transdisciplinary is actually referring to a different range of disciplines or faculties all working together in one group or in one faculty. So I had, for example, in a group assignment for BCII, I’d be working with students from IT, from business, from health, from engineering, and you know, it’s a whole range of different perspectives in one group and you’re working on an assignment together. And so the skills that I’ve learnt from that area and applying it into my law degree, has been really, really important for making me future ready for when I enter the workforce. So, lawyers don’t always work with lawyers and you know, you’ll be liaising with a bunch of clients with a bunch of different people from different perspectives from different backgrounds and to be able to articulate what you want in a way that they will understand is like important and it’s so needed in the industry at the moment. Even perspectives of innovation, legal, the legal industry is constantly evolving, constantly changing and legal tech is an example of something that’s new, newly emerging and the perspectives and the things that we learned throughout BCII especially in terms of creating change and driving innovation is something that really gives you an advantage when you’re going out there and looking for a job and, you know, attending interviews, you have something different, something to talk about that other students don’t.
The most rewarding aspects of my studies overall, specifically in relation to BCII has been able to work consistently with industry partners. So throughout each school or most schools actually, we’ve always had an assignment briefed by an industry partner. So for example, in my first year, first subject, it was, City of Sydney, they gave us a problem and in our second week, we had to work together in groups and find a solution. In my second year, it was MasterCard. In my third year, it’s PwC. So, like such high profile industry partners and really providing solutions to their problems is really cool. And it’s super fun. And I guess it really sets you apart from different from other students. And the fact that it’s all done through like a think tank simulation or a hackathon. I find it rewarding that it’s quite different from traditional forms of learning. So I’m really excited every time I come into BCII school because I’ve just been doing lectures and tutorials in my law degree, and I get to try something new and immerse myself in a new style of learning and I find that really really fun and really rewarding.
So doing a combined degree with Law and BCII is in itself already giving me a competitive edge. BCII is such an invaluable degree in itself, because of things that you learn about, already make you different, it already makes you stand out from the thousands of other graduates who you know are just doing normal things like business or comms or, you know, this traditional forms of learning and with law to combine this innovative, this really creative form of learning, it really sets you apart. It gives you a competitive edge in your, you know, interviews or in your recruitment process. Specifically the industry partners that you’re constantly working with, the hackathon simulation style learning. It’s super, super practical, super future focused and it really makes you like adaptive, it makes you agile for the workplace of the future, which is, especially in law constantly evolving, constantly changing, especially with things like automation and AI coming into the field as well.
It’s definitely challenging, it really stretches you and pushes you to your limits. And sometimes I think, gosh, I really want a break right now, like I could do with a month long break. But, you know, at the end of the day, I look back and I think, Wow, I’ve grown so much in the past, like two and a half years. And it’s not even just as a person but as a student. My learning has changed and grown so much and I honestly couldn’t have done that without BCII.