Speaking recently on The Boutique Lawyer Show, Ms Rubinstein said that the cultural mindset of the legal profession has shifted significantly since she started – when work came above all else.

“When I started, I think there was one other female partner of about 40 or 50 partners. She had sacrificed everything to get there, and this was sort of a badge of honour for her. It was certainly the mindset that you gave everything to the partnership if you were serious about your career,” she said.

“If you wanted to be rewarded with status, decent work, money, you had to basically choose work over everything.”

But everything was put into perspective after Ms Rubinstein was attacked in the middle of the night, in her own home. A partner when the incident occurred, she found herself ingrained in a culture that wouldn’t let her take the day off.

“I had to basically fight for my survival and was successful, thank God, in doing that. But I then woke up and went to work the next day. It was remarkable to me. No one asked me to do that. I mean, I think surviving a violent attack is a decent excuse to take a day off, but it was just so ingrained in me that I just woke up and went to work. And I saw that so much around me,” she said.

“Once you’ve made associate, you want to be made senior associate, then you want to be made a partner. In order to actually succeed and thrive in that world, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

After becoming a parent, Ms Rubinstein asked her firm for flexible working arrangements, which they gave her but told her to keep quiet about. Then at the height of the pandemic, she decided to step out on her own and start Level Up Legal.

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The firm is only one month old, and Ms Rubinstein said she was inspired to make a change after the pandemic hit – and after working at top-tier, BigLaw firms for over 20 years.

“The pandemic changed everything for me, changed my perspective of what I wanted, changed my perspective of what was possible, and just gave me this drive and this energy. I want to do this. I’m going to take the chance,” she said.

“So, I started up my own intellectual property boutique law firm. It’s certainly been an interesting time to start a law firm, but I feel very privileged to be able to do it. And it’s exciting.”

Alongside her partner, Zan Lee, who is based in Brisbane, Ms Rubinstein said that her firm would focus on trust and authenticity.

“The absolute cornerstone of our firm is going to be trust. I will work with legal professionals that I trust. I hate the idea of thinking that you’ve got to micromanage the people you work with to get great results,” she said.

“I’m very lucky, [Zan and I] have an enormous amount of trust in each other. We know that we’re able to be effective and efficient lawyers in previously unimagined ways. And so, we encourage authenticity.”

Furthermore, Ms Rubinstein said this trust and authenticity would lead to better relationships with clients – and in turn, a better work/life balance.

“If you establish real relationships with your clients, human relationships with your clients, and you’ve built up that trust, they know that you do the work well, they trust the value, I think that they would strongly appreciate if that lawyer was to say, ‘I’ve suffered a terrible family loss, and I need a few days to myself’,” she said.

“My experience is that as I’ve become more real, clients have become more real, and our relationships have become stronger.

“Work-life balance looks like different things for many people. For me, it’s flexibility. Some people would say that it needs to be more than flexibility for them. I think it’s not a one-size-fits-all. For me, it was flexibility and not having that obsession with FaceTime and sort of die at your desk,” Ms Rubinstein added.

Whilst more law firms are increasingly becoming more flexible and prioritising workplace culture, Ms Rubinstein said that post-pandemic, this trend will only continue to grow.

“I think that we’ve been presented with an opportunity post pandemic to actually ask the BigLaw firms to make that one of their offerings. Work-life balance should be something that young lawyers should be asking for and will be asking for. I think we’ve got an opportunity to really reframe the way we think good lawyers are made,” she said.

“Where the real change will happen is when talented lawyers start demanding that from their employers. I think that is the only way that BigLaw firms are going to change, is when they recognise that if they want to attract and retain the top talent, they’re going to have to make that part of their offering. I think that’s where the real change is going to happen.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Brigit Rubinstein, click below: