Head Tutor series—introducing Kelsey Farmer
The last in our Head Tutor series for 2015, Kelsey says her law degree has opened doors for her. As well as tutoring, she has worked as a research assistant at a law firm and as a clerk at the Takeovers Panel. She has also co-authored a company law textbook update.
What attracted you to studying law at Victoria University?
I studied politics and philosophy in my first two years at Victoria University. Those subjects introduced me to big ideas like government, the economy, fairness and justice—but I wanted to learn about how those ideas are put into practice. Victoria’s Faculty of Law was the natural choice given its excellent reputation and that I already had close ties with the university.
How have you found your time at Victoria’s Faculty of Law?
Keeping up with lectures can be challenging because there is a lot of material but also so many cool things to do within the Law School! I’ve enjoyed being involved in the Wellington Community Justice Project—an organisation of law students who help out with legal projects in the community. Helping people to solve real-life problems is deeply rewarding and helps remind me that law doesn’t need to be a flurry of cases, statutes and hypotheticals (not all the time, at least!).
The LAWS 489 honours course has been the highlight of my degree. It involves choosing your own topic of study and running with it to produce a research paper. Since there are legal aspects to nearly everything, it gives you a lot of freedom to explore the subjects that interest you. I conducted my research into prediction markets and state counterclaims in investment law—two subjects that have certainly never come up in any of my mainstream classes!
What can you tell us about your experience tutoring?
I tutor LAWS 214 Criminal Law. Criminal law has always interested me because it can have such an enormous impact on people’s lives—for both the perpetrators and victims of crime.
My favourite part of tutoring is figuring out how to get out of my own head and into the heads of 70 students. People think about things in hundreds of different ways so it’s a fun puzzle to work out how to communicate complex information in a way that everyone will understand. That said, law students are very clever and always have questions to keep me on my toes.
What are your plans for the future?
All going well, I’ll finish my law degree next month and I’m moving to Auckland to start at Mayne Wetherell in February next year. I hope to spend my summer outdoors. Hopefully in the grand outdoors of Mexico or Italy, but anywhere with bit of sunshine will do.