From law to code

People assume I've always built software. I haven't.

I spent my early twenties in law. First as a paralegal in a small Melbourne firm, drafting court documents and chasing accounts, then in The Hague supporting trial teams at the UN's tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. My job was helping prepare evidence for war crimes cases. It was serious, careful, high-stakes work, and it taught me things I still lean on: attention to detail, staying steady under pressure, and actually caring whether something is right.

It also taught me I didn't want to be a lawyer.

What pulled me out was startups. I talked my way into helping run Slush, the Helsinki conference that gathers 15,000 founders and investors, and spent a few years around events like it across Europe. Being in those rooms, watching people build companies out of nothing, was the most alive I'd ever felt at work. I came home to Australia certain I wanted to make things, not just organise the people who made them.

So I taught myself. Slowly, and badly at first. I built a platform for university students called Studychatr, started Wicked Sites building for Australian businesses, and eventually Petal.

I don't think the law years were a detour. Preparing a brief and shipping a feature aren't as different as they sound. Both are about taking something messy and ambiguous and turning it into something precise that holds up when people lean on it. I just prefer doing it in code.

If you're staring down a career that doesn't fit, take this as your permission slip. The useful skills come with you. The path doesn't have to be straight to end up somewhere good.