It's Law Week and Head of the UNE Law School, Professor Michael Adams, has a confession to make.
As a young law student, he had a really neat party trick. In the days before the Internet, he would go to the library at the University College London and read case after case after case.
"I memorised the judgements and principles for about 500 cases," says Michael. "And people would quiz me on them all the time, trying to trip me up."
After becoming a Professor of Corporate Law in Australia, he joined Blake Dawson (now Ashurst) to practise, and became known as the Walking Encyclopaedia of the Corporations Act. It has 1488 sections and Michael knew every one of them. "It saved my colleagues lots of money, because they wouldn't have to spend hours and hours doing research, and I could translate what each section meant. Of course, I'm less familiar with those sections now, 30 years later."
During a successful career in practice and legal education, Michael has mentored hundreds of students and more junior colleagues. In 2000 he won the Australian University Teacher of the Year award for Law and Legal Studies and, earlier this year, was named the Academic Lawyer of the Year.
While he admits to a particular passion for "black-letter law" - the cases and legislation that our Parliaments pass - Michael maintains that all law intersects our lives in a multitude of meaningful ways.
"There are so many possible scenarios with the law," he says.
You would think that by now we would have covered every permutation that could occur, but we haven't; new things are happening all the time.
And the other side of law - the policy side, which is more about how law is applied in society - profoundly impacts how we live our lives every day, he says.
"The law not only tells us what we can and can't do; often it is used to change the way we think," Michael says. "Very simple examples of that include drink driving, seatbelt and anti-smoking laws. Society is changed through the enforcement of such laws. It's often seen as heavy and technical, but the law equips us to improve the lives of others."
Professor Michael Adams.
Charting a better way forward
Even Michael's area of specialty, corporate law, directly influences behaviour.
"Some businesses don't do the nicest things, to their employees, shareholders or customers; sometimes it's all about profits," he says. "Corporate law enables us to chart a better way forward; to genuinely consult all stakeholders when making decisions and to take responsibility for their welfare, beyond maximising profits. If staff and customers are happy, then we start to see some real benefits. Social responsibility actually makes for a better business model. It's a win-win."
These days, in addition to his senior management role at UNE, Michael maintains engagement with students by teaching the unit Technology and the Law, and has just overseen the seventh edition of his textbook Australian Corporate Law, the highest-selling corporate law textbook in Australia. The first in his family to attend university, Michael still gets a thrill seeing UNE law graduates move out into the professional world.
"About half our law students go on to practise law and half will use it in other parts of their life, whether they go into film-making, politics, policy or something else," Michael says.
"There are so many roles where it's useful to have good, solid legal knowledge and an understanding how laws work. Law is a beautiful thing: it helps us to prevent many harmful and hurtful things from happening and to enhance other aspects of our lives."
