Jayden Lin saw Auckland's Asian law student communities operating largely separately, with the networks, mentoring and professional connections that can help open doors not always flowing easily between them. His response was to found the Asian Law Students' Association Auckland (ALSA), bringing communities together and creating stronger pathways into the profession.
That caught our attention as a great example of fresh eyes in action. It also got us curious about our own community: how visible is in-house law to students? As Jayden found, exposure to it can sometimes sit behind an already competitive clerkship process. And is there something those of us already working in-house could usefully contribute?
What prompted you to start ALSA, and what do you hope it will make possible for Asian law students?
Auckland had Chinese, Korean, and South Asian law student societies, each doing good work in their own communities. Collaboration between them was rare, and there was no standing structure connecting them, or one primarily focused on the pipeline into the profession. That fragmentation matters because students from different Asian communities rarely meet before they enter practice, so the networks that help people later never form. Reading Mai Chen's 2019 report, Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Parties in the Courts: A Chinese Case Study, made the stakes clearer to me. I then counted how many Asian partners, barristers, judges and MPs there actually were. The numbers are small in every case. The gap is not simply one of ability. It is that the confidence, networks and unwritten rules that carry people into leadership are not always passed down the same way. ALSA connects those communities so we form one bridge into the profession rather than four separate ones. Our mentoring programme pairs students with recent graduates and practitioners, because the fastest way to believe a pathway exists is to meet someone who has walked it.
How visible is an in-house legal career to law students?
"In-house is seen as desirable but distant, something you reach after several years of commercial or litigation practice." | ||||
In-house is seen as desirable but distant, something you reach after several years of commercial or litigation practice. That holds even among students who have clerked at large firms. Most know the term but have little sense of what the work actually involves. One student I spoke to had picked up a little only because an in-house lawyer happened to be in a meeting during their clerkship. That is the structural problem. Students who never clerk, or who would be well suited to in-house but never encounter it, may never get the opportunity to find out.
How are law students thinking about AI as they prepare to enter the profession?
Students tend to use AI narrowly, mainly for summarising cases. The deeper issue is that most have not seen how the profession actually uses these tools, so they cannot easily form a view on where they help and where they mislead. There is also a quieter worry underneath it: that leaning on these tools while you are still learning costs you the skill you are meant to be building. Within ALSA, I encourage our team to find new ways of using AI across our operations, precisely so they meet its limits early. What they are really asking for is not how to use these tools more, but how to use them well.
What would you like in-house legal leaders to know about the next generation entering law, or how the door could be opened a little wider?
That many students are capable of going straight in-house without first spending years in private practice. Knowledge and experience will always matter, but judgement, adaptability and the willingness to keep learning are becoming increasingly important as technology changes how legal work gets done. Those qualities are harder to assess at the application stage. A CV and a GPA tell you what someone has done, not how they will respond when the work is real, and an interview rewards whoever performs best on the day. None of that matters, though, if students never apply. So the first step is visibility. I would encourage in-house teams to engage directly with universities and make opportunities known, because students cannot pursue what they cannot see.
Ngā mihi to Jayden and ALSA Auckland for sharing their perspective with the in-house legal community, and for the work they’re doing to create stronger pathways for Asian law students. There’s plenty here to keep the conversation going about opening doors, how visible in-house careers are to students and where our future in-house lawyers might come from.
If you’re interested in learning more about ALSA Auckland, getting involved with its mentoring programme or connecting with students, you can find out more/contact ALSA here.