Essendon Fields has formalised an exciting internship, providing an opportunity for a final year law student to experience working alongside their in-house General Counsel, Stacey Pettit.

Running for one day a week over a twelve-week period, Essendon Fields is offering great diversity of legal experience of a mixed-use business precinct, with the opportunity to review legal matters relating to all aspects of its operations including automotive, retail, development, leasing and aviation.

The Essendon Fields based internship welcomes Monash University’s Zoe Zhou as the first recipient, a final year Juris Doctor student with an impressive array of clerkships, internships and volunteer legal office roles already achieved.

General Counsel, Stacey Pettit, said she was privileged to have such a high calibre final year law student as Zoe Zhou with such a promising future join the Essendon Fields office.

“This is a great initiative to be a part of, and I have our fingers crossed we can offer this annually in the future. I know from personal experience that Essendon Fields offers a great legal environment to learn from,’’ Ms Pettit said.

The Monash Law School clinical placement program that helped formalise this opportunity, operates by students completing an application form to indicate their interests in particular placement opportunities and then Monash will pair the student with appropriate host organisations.

“The idea is to have the student develop practical legal skills by undertaking a range of tasks at Essendon Fields, such as legal research, legal documentation preparation, and policy writing. At the same time, it’s an opportunity for the student to learn the workplace culture and understand what it’s like to work in a commercial in-house team,’’ said Ms Pettit.

Zoe Zhou speaks fondly of her internship opportunity with Essendon Fields.

“The chance to work in an environment where I’m able to engage with everything from aviation to retail, to automotive and more is just fantastic. It must be one of the most unique working environments in Melbourne and the 12-week internship is a great experience,’’ she said.