’OH, SHE’S A WOMAN’, HEAR HER ROAR

Thank God Cairns barrister Steph Williams did not take a gap year. Because for someone with a remarkable and decorated 14-year career in law, her down-to-earth and empathetic nature has been one of the Far Northern legal industry’s greatest assets.

As the first in her family to pursue a tertiary qualification 19 years ago, Steph’s journey as lawyer, wife and mother would present to any ordinary person myriad reasons as to why she could have turned her back on the industry.

“I finished my law degree and thought, ‘thank God, now I can do something I really want to do – I’m going to be a photographer’,” Steph says.

But there would be a list of people, probably longer than the Queensland Criminal Code itself, that would be grateful Steph, who once had ambitions of auditioning for the National Institute for Dramatic Art, didn’t swap the cloaks for a Canon.

Of those people, more recently it’s the university students and working professionals who are flooding her inbox with gratitude after listening to her new podcast – All Rise, The Mentoring Podcast for Women Lawyers.

“I’ve had a couple of really good mentors in my career – Magistrate Melanie Ho and the Deputy State Coroner Jane Bentley,” Steph says.

“And I thought to myself, not everyone has access to mentors, particularly for women in regions. Or you might be too embarrassed or afraid to ask someone to be your mentor. Or speak about what’s going on in your life or your career at the time. I think there are particularly unique challenges for women in law.

“So I thought, what if I interviewed women about some of the challenges that they’ve experienced? And then if somebody is thinking ‘how do I ask for a pay rise, how do I come back from maternity leave?’ they can search the podcast and listen to a conversation where somebody’s gone through that.”

Eight episodes have been released so far, while many more are in production, and Steph says the feedback has surprised her.

“People that I don’t know are just messaging me saying thank you so much, and lots from men as well who have said they’re really benefiting from some of the discussions as well.”

Born in Darwin, Steph’s family moved to Cairns when she was 12, where she completed high school.

She started her university degree in Canberra, but returned to Cairns and completed her studies at James Cook University.

“I was enrolled at Canberra, I wouldn’t say I studied. I tried to study but I was having a bit too much fun,” Steph says.

It was in Canberra where she met her husband Ben Tooth, who is now the CEO of the Cairns Private Hospital.

“I had moved back (to Cairns) – I said ‘look I really like you, but I gotta start doing something’,” she says.

“I can’t keep racking up HECS fees without any marks.

“He said ‘all right, I’ll see you in a year’. He finished down there and got a graduate job up here.”

Steph says there is no typical career for a lawyer, but she’s had “a very interesting one” and one she’s not done yet.

From simultaneously studying and working full-time at the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in Cairns to representing victims, complainants and defendants as a barrister, Steph has just recently returned to the DPP as crown prosecutor. But she says her most memorable years were between 2011 and 2014 when she worked as counsel assisting the coroner.

“There’s so many ways you can die that you don’t realise until you work at the coroner’s office – it does make me a little bit paranoid,” Steph says jokingly.

“But really, it is one of the few times in law that I think you get to be truly impartial.

“Your job is solely to assist the court to find out what happened and to prevent similar deaths from happening in the future.

“You can be someone who has a role in positive change for the community. It’s dealing with families who’ve lost someone.

“People at their darkest times are looking to the coroner to find answers.”

But the mother of two says as interesting as her career has been, it had also come with its fair share of challenges.

“The day before I was admitted as a lawyer (in 2006), I had been to hospital because I had a miscarriage and I had to have a procedure for that, so that was a really difficult time,” Steph says.

“That was a really significant event because I’d just been discharged and the next day I had to go to this ceremony like nothing had happened.

“This is what has underpinned the way that I’ve approached my career – about women supporting women and building networks in the law, so that when there are times like that you’ve got someone to turn to which I didn’t have at that time.”

The emotional rollercoaster didn’t end there for Steph who started noticing more challenges of working as a woman lawyer while she was on maternity leave with her first child in 2008.

“I had an acting role at the Commonwealth DPP and they advertised that as a permanent position,” she says.

“I rang my boss and said ‘is there any point in me applying – I’m on maternity leave and I can’t really prepare’.

“I got an interview and went along sleepdeprived having had very little exposure to legal issues for several months. One of the questions in the interview was ‘What do you do in your spare time to improve your legal skill and knowledge?’.

“I didn’t get the job, and it went to a man who had no children.”

Her second child was born the following year and Steph says watching her peers progress in their careers while on maternity leave gave her a feeling of stagnation.

“So I was really quite downbeat about it, and it took me about three and a half years to really accept the choices I’d made about having my children early,” she says.

“I could see my husband being promoted as well, and he’d come home and he’d tell me ‘I’m now a manager’ and I’d burst into tears.”

A recent Law Council of Australia report found that female barristers were now receiving about 27 per cent of all briefs, with a target of 30 per cent. But Steph says that target should be higher.

“The figures don’t necessarily indicate that women are getting 30 per cent of the quality work, and that’s where there’s room for improvement,” she says.

“When you’re working in criminal law and you’re a young woman, clients can often think that you’re not very competent. That’s a common challenge that women have.

“I still get that – last year a solicitor said I’ve briefed this barrister, this is her name, Steph Williams, and the client said ‘oh, she’s a woman’.

“To overcome that you just put on your mum voice.”