Counsel Media First Birthday Speech - 4 July 2026 (Independence Day)

Good evening, everyone!!

Yes, hello, it's me, I’m the problem.. it’s me.

Now. You will notice I have written this one down, which anyone who has ever seen me speak, especially the law students in the room, will know is deeply out of character. I love a bit of improv. I have built an entire career on winging it with confidence. But tonight is too important to me to risk it, so bear with me while I read, because I have things I need to get out and I intend to get every single one of them out. Also I've capped this at eight minutes, which the recovering lawyers in the room will recognise as exactly 1.3 billable units. You're welcome.

I want to start with my why, and to do that I have to take you somewhere a bit dark for a minute. Don't panic, the bar reopens shortly.

In 2022, I nearly didn't make it here.

My mental health took me right to the edge of everything and I came far too close to not getting a second act at all. What saved me was the right support and the right care, eventually, and people in this very room who caught me when I almost fell. It turns out rock bottom is a surprisingly solid foundation, because everything you see tonight got built on it. When you get a second chance like that, and it genuinely does feel like a second chance, you do not take it lightly and you absolutely do not waste it on fear.

Which is where the fearlessness comes from. I have nothing left to lose, which I'm told is a very dangerous quality in a woman with a podcast.

So my why is simple.

There is an eldest daughter in me who looks around at a profession that is not working for so many of its people and just refuses to accept it. Eldest daughters in the room, you know the energy. We see a broken system and our first instinct is to organise it, feed it and fix it whether it asked us to or not. This is about legacy now. I am optimising my life for creativity and impact first and foremost. If it was money, I would’ve stayed where I was. It's about using my very specific set of skills, and yes I did just quote Liam Neeson, to tell stories, build community and make people feel less alone and actually seen in the law and corporate. If even one young person coming up can look at me and think, well, if she can do it, then so can I, that is a legacy worth building.

Because I did just about the whole climb. Fifteen years of it. I got that seat at the table I'd been clamouring for my entire career, and honestly, I just wasn't that impressed with the view. Good people, most of them, but working inside a structure built around the me instead of the we, with greed and fear increasingly running the show. So I thought, you know what, I don't actually want a seat at that table anymore. I'll pop over here and build my own. That's what this is. Everyone's welcome at it. If you're kind, if you're flawed but trying, if you want to leave things better than you found them, pull up a chair.

My high school motto was Bonus Intra, Melior Exi. Enter good, come out better. I can't hand on heart say that was my experience of fifteen years in the law. I went in good, optimistic and excited to contribute but I came out battered, bullied and bruised and judging by how much I’ve since spent on a multi-disciplinary health care team, I’m not sure I came out better.

But maybe that's exactly what I owe the next generation, because the problems of this moment in human history need what lawyers uniquely hold. The rules that hold our society together are imperfect but they're the best we've got to work with for now, and right now they're gatekept from the people who need them most. We need our lawyers to be well. We need them to sustain a whole life in the law, not white-knuckle a decade or more of it.

Now, to the lessons of year one in business, of which there have been an insane amount.

Lesson one. You can genuinely get paid to yap. I did not know the market wanted that. Not all places and spaces do, it turns out, but enough of them to pay the bills, keep the lights on and reinvest in what I'm building, which frankly still feels like getting away with something.

Lesson two. Know your audience. I will probably not be doing another workshop for a certain flavour of law firm where a room full of associates give me the Gen Z stare from hell for a full hour. Hardest gig of my life. As I said to Mum afterwards, it felt like being a clown in a prison. They weren't rude, some of them even enjoyed it and have privately engaged me for 1:1 coaching, but every single one of them was mentally back at their desk doing billables while they are made to sit through a session with an in-house lawyer who isn't even a lawyer anymore and turned up with stickers?!

Our hardest gigs teach us the most and I now recommend offsite events for these type of activities and billable relief so the lawyers can be truly present and not checking their Teams quietly under the desk.

Lesson three. There is no greater high than waking up to discover a complete stranger on the other side of the world has spent seventy dollars on your digital products overnight, which is my fancy way of saying ebooks. Content is the flywheel that spins all of it and it's the thing I'm most naturally built for, because it turns out you can only bury a theatre kid for so long before the jazz hands claw their way back out.

Now some overdue thank yous.

Clarissa Rayward, who really started this movement for me. Anna Lozynski, who showed me what it looks like to be an ambitious, brilliant woman at the top of the in-house world with an online platform and zero apologies. Whenever a woman does that she risks being met with sneers of “attention seeking”, “who does she think she is” and “bit too big for her boots”, which is step one in how you silence a woman, followed closely by the rumour mill and then the cheque book. They persisted anyway.

Gary Vee, my mentor, who does not know he's my mentor despite the fact that we have met three times. Yes, it's a bit of a cult. I am a willing and extremely enthusiastic member and so much of this year traces back to what that man has taught me, through his own content over the past 10 years, so I regret nothing.

To Rachel and Shontai, here tonight as law students and my first hires. I do this for you and everyone like you coming through wide eyed, brilliant and full of life. We cannot let that get snuffed out by fear, greed and the old guard. Between us, that lot represent the last dying breath of the dinosaur anyway. The comet is coming. We just have to be patient and keep our snacks close. AI adoption this year has expedited things immeasurably.

I also know that the Honourable Justice Michael Kirby can see the better world I'm building towards here, and yes, that is a casual name drop at my own party. The living legal legend himself has actually read some of my work, endorsed it and challenged core parts of my thinking in ways that have only made it stronger. It's with grace and humility, two words rarely used about me, that I'll keep learning and keep acknowledging the privilege of getting to do this at all.

I keep my sprinkling of changemaker delusion in check with my common sense committee: Dad, Dugald and Krystal - oh and therapist Kate. But the committee is expertly chaired by the ever patient Will. Still waters run deep and you are the depth and strength I have needed most.

This past year, that poor man would come home with no idea what he was walking into. Some days it was me in the foetal position, crying into my Moo Deng plushie like a scared kid, convinced I'd never pay myself superannuation again and would be homeless by fifty five. Other days I was bouncing off the walls because a stranger in the UK had bought a hat and an ebook, proving that if you put your shingle out and talk about it, your vibe really does attract your tribe. Will, thank you. You're the steadiest man I know and you deserve several of tonight's gifted drinks.

To my family, thank you for holding space, for catching me and for never once saying I was too much or too loud (at least not to my face). Only ever, that's just our Mel, and we love her exactly as she is.

Speaking of family businesses, tonight is brought to you by proud pinkies from the Pink Pages. Chef Nick from Koha Cuisine, Juanita from Rowe Collective, Lizzie Lend for the dress plus Florence & Eve peep the pearl ear rings. Support them, book them, buy from them. The Pink Pages is my new side hustle now that my side hustle has become my main hustle.

So what's next.

This time next year, CounselCon will have launched in a big splashy way. The unofficial tagline is not your daddy's legal conference. The even more unofficial tagline is hot girls go to CounselCon. Hot boys too, we're inclusive. I want to build something this profession has never seen and probably didn't know it wanted, and maybe it isn’t even ready for yet, so we'll see how it goes, because that's the whole point.

I’ll keep experimenting, keep learning who needs what I've got and who wants it, brick by brick, day by day. New podcast and new products. Informed by all of the data I am collecting every day, in every conversation with other lawyers that the current system isn’t working for.

Every person in this room was handpicked. You're part of this and some of you have gone above and beyond for me in ways you may never fully know. The next big chapter is unfolding and I can't tell you exactly where it goes, but it won't be for lack of passion, purpose or impact.

You're all here on day one. So eat, drink and cause some good trouble.

Glasses up.

As I always say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

To a rising tide.

💖