I didn’t really like Science and Maths at school, and my teachers all thought I would be a teacher. When I told them I was going to study Law – after falling in love with the law cloisters at Melbourne University – they were horrified!

Ivanhoe girls were generally expected to become teachers, nurses or secretaries. There was no vocational education and I had no mentors. Only the very brightest got to study STEM subjects with the boys at Ivanhoe Grammar.

I remember that I attended a careers night at Wilson Hall at the University and met a woman solicitor who told me I could gain a double degree in five years. I thought that for an extra year to come out with double degrees sounded like a good deal. I remember she was wearing a chic houndstooth suit and I was impressed!

I had no idea what studying law entailed and I failed my first legal assignment. In despair, I walked out of the university grounds across Swanston Street to the old Women’s Hospital to enquire when the next intake of nurses would be!

I wonder where I found my determination to continue?

Because by the end of that first year, I had found my feet. If you had told me then that I would end up as in-house lawyer at the Women’s Hospital many years later, I would not have believed you. 

For me, the best form of motivation is when someone says I cannot do something! I was determined to finish my course, and prove all the nay-sayers wrong. (It was a commonly held view at the time that females only went to university to find a husband! The senior partner in a law firm had said this to my father. I was determined to prove him and my teachers at school wrong!)

Once I graduated in 1976, I married and did my Articles with the law firm of Darvall and Hambleton. I was the only female professional in the office.

I stayed with the firm for 17 years and was its first female partner.

In 1984 after the birth of my second son, I was asked to be the lawyer on the Ethics Committee of Prince Henry’s Hospital. This is what started my interest in medical and health law.

Over my 40 year career, I have been the first in-house lawyer of Southern Health Care Network, (now Monash Health), Women’s and Children’s Health, Epworth Health Care Group and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. 

I have also taught health law to health professionals, such as doctors, nurses and allied health students undertaking a Masters in Health Administration. 

For many years I was concerned to better protect the rights of women to protect the privacy of their health information, and to seek an abortion for their health, including their mental health and well being . I was strongly of the view the law needed changing. I assisted in the reform of the criminal law in Victoria, abortion law, privacy law, and the coronial processes set out in the Coroners Act. I made a submission on behalf of the Women’s Hospital to the Victorian Law Reform Commission and in 2008 the Abortion Law Reform Act was enacted.

So, despite starting out from Ivanhoe Girls’ like a square peg in a round hole, I have really loved the law, and found my niche working in health. 

I would encourage any student considering a legal career to explore this possibility by talking with lawyers, and gaining some actual experience of the workplace as a first step.

Elizabeth Kennedy