What could have been war turned out to be law for Bond University graduate, Skagen Fielding.
For a long time, Mr Fielding harboured ambitions for a career in the military.
The story of how legal study trumped the army is quite something.
“I was hellbent on enlisting straight out of school,” he says.
“I went through the whole application process, and I was ready and raring to go. But they turned me away on medical grounds.”
What he thought were nothing more than kinds of trips to the physiotherapist any active teenager might undertake ended up having significant ramifications.
“I'd played lots of sport growing up, and that meant lots of trips to the physio for treatment to minor injuries. The army saw that as a big red flag. Even though I’d never sustained any injury of significance, they saw fit to turn me away.”
The rejection touched a nerve. The sleeping giant that was Mr Fielding’s sense of justice was suddenly wide awake.
Instead of getting angry, he got busy.
“I pored over all the rules and put them up against my circumstances. I wrote this long letter about why I thought I was being treated unfairly and how I was medically fine to enlist.”
He showed the letter to his mother. She was impressed.
‘Straight away she said, ‘You should be a lawyer’!”
The idea struck a chord. His mother, Peta (Class of 1992) and sister Daisy (Class of 2018) immediately suggested he look at Bond University.
He applied successfully for a Bond University Excellence Scholarship.
Soon after he received a call from Army recruitment. They had read his letter and decided to reconsider. Mr Fielding was free to enlist if he so wished.
“I told them, ‘Thanks but no thanks’. I was going to law school.”
By his own admission, Mr Fielding knew little about what lay ahead, but it didn’t take him long to settle. The reason for this was easy pin down, he says.
“The small classes and the intimacy of the experience is really helpful. You feel supported every step of the way. I speak to friends who are at larger universities and their experience is completely different. They’ll rarely have an actual conversation with their lecturers, for instance. For me it was an almost daily thing.”
Mooting helped too.
Bond University has a proud record when it comes to mooting competition.
Alongside his classmate Tim Middleton, Mr Fielding won the Rose Litigation Lawyers Brian Orr Mooting Competition in the Senior Division in 2022. He also represented Bond at the 2022 Justice Kirby Contract Law Moot in Melbourne where he and his team claimed second place.
“One of my few regrets was being too nervous to sign up for (mooting) sooner,” he says. “Knowing what I know now, I’d definitely have signed on for the Junior Division of the Brian Orr moot in my first semester.
“The skills you take away from mooting competition are irreplaceable. Organising an argument. Working with people. Collaborative problem solving. Looking for multiple solutions. You absolutely can’t fake it. You simply have to be prepared.”
Mr Fielding has already dabbled in some legal work.
He completed a stint at a firm specialising in litigation. He’s also worked in-house for a private equity firm.
But for now, he’s going to put his legal knowledge to an entirely different kind of graduate test – he’s bought a small business franchise.
“I’ve already found what I’ve learned at Bond to be invaluable,” he says.
“I feel confident that what I’ve learned in law school has an immediate practical application. In fact, I feel like Bond has given me the confidence to tread my own path.”
But what of those military ambitions that he fought so hard for? Turns out they never died completely. Last December Mr Fielding joined the Army Reserve.
“I still got to enlist and do all the training so it’s been a bit of a full circle moment,” he says.
“For now, it’s only a part-time commitment but the door is definitely open to a career in the military down the track if I go down that path.”