{"id":498,"date":"2020-06-11T11:01:53","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T01:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/?p=498"},"modified":"2020-09-09T13:26:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T03:56:10","slug":"mellissalarkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/2020\/06\/11\/mellissalarkin\/","title":{"rendered":"A powerful vision for law"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n2020 Winner of the Small Business Award, Mellissa Larkin epitomises the ethos of The Telstra Business Women\u2019s Awards of “undoing traditional business for the better”.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flinders University law graduate, Mellissa Larkin (BA\/LLB\/LP \u201901) founded Peripheral Blue in 2016, with a powerful vision of creating a firm that emphasised emotional intelligence and treating clients as thought partners, while charging for the value of services received instead of a rigid \u2018time spent\u2019 billing model.<\/p>\n

\u2018There will always be a place for BigLaw but its one-size-fits-all approach just didn\u2019t fit the way I wanted to practice law,\u2019 says Mellissa. \u2018I’m driven to help the industry service its clients better and improve the way practitioners are supported.\u2019<\/p>\n

Walking away from almost two-decades in BigLaw took a giant leap of faith but Mellissa’s willingness to consider different ways of doing things, coupled with her vision to change the legal industry for the better, were her driving forces.<\/p>\n

It was through adapting to the dynamic law school environment at Flinders that Mellissa experienced what it meant to be truly flexible in her approach.<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s nothing quite like transitioning from high school as a merit winning humanities student, to having your work seriously red lined,\u2019 says Mellissa. \u2018The ability to be flexible and adjust to new ways of working has been integral to establishing a new firm.\u2019<\/p>\n

As a business leader, Mellissa models emotional intelligence with self-awareness and self-belief, alongside her entrepreneurial skills to form the foundation of Peripheral Blue.<\/p>\n

Mellissa says her greatest learning since starting the firm is to have enough self-belief in your influence to affect change.<\/p>\n

‘You need to be confident in the value you can provide and objective enough to quantify that value.\u2019<\/p>\n

While Peripheral Blue was formed to provide a new and more responsive service to clients, the mission has grown into advocating for much broader change in the traditional legal industry.<\/p>\n

Winning the Telstra Business Women\u2019s Small Business Award is recognition of accomplishing that change, but Mellissa hopes the award will become a greater platform.<\/p>\n

She says, \u2018I want to share our powerful vision for the future of legal practitioners in this country, promoting flexible and equitable legal workplaces.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2020 Winner of the Small Business Award, Mellissa Larkin epitomises the ethos of The Telstra Business Women\u2019s Awards of “undoing traditional business for the better”. Flinders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1333,"featured_media":506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[825,2080],"tags":[1893,910],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-of-business-government-and-law","category-study-law","tag-law-graduate","tag-lawyer"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/alumni-stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}