The Scarlet Letter | Season 2 | Episode 10 | Ashley Chow and Christian Lane

In this delightfully honest and uplifting episode, Monash Law students Ashley Chow and Christian Lane talk with Tamara Wilkinson about A Reasonable Standard (ARS). ARS is one of the teams that comprise the Law Ambassador Program, one of the Faculty's flagship programs. It's a student-ran team founded to tackle mental health, failure, and everything law school forgets to mention. From failing Property A to surviving campus culture shock, the duo dives into what it really means to be a law student today. There's feminism, intersectionality, sexual violence awareness, and a bold rejection of the “LinkedIn perfection” law school myth.

First published 2017.

The Scarlet Letter podcast is produced by the Feminist Legal Studies Group. This podcast features interviews with feminists connected to the law, discussing their life, work, and feminist perspectives. It's perfect for anyone passionate about feminist legal scholarship.

Find out more about the Feminist Legal Studies Group

Transcript | The Scarlet Letter | Season 2 | Episode 10 | Ashley Chow and Christian Lane

Tamara Wilkinson: [00:00:00] Good morning, I'm Tamara Wilkinson and welcome to this episode of The Scarlet Letter, the monthly podcast of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash University's Faculty of Law. Today I'm joined by two of our law students here at Monash, Ashley Chow and Christian Lane. Ashley is a fourth year arts law student who's also a freelance writer on the side.

She's interested in speaking and sharing her personal stories that advocate for women believing wholeheartedly in their self worth. Christian is also currently studying a law arts degree and will be entering his fourth year at Monash in 2019. His passions include playing guitar, early mornings at the beach, and collecting vinyl.

He's also the elected president of the Monash Progressive Law Network for 2019 and a summer intern at the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Welcome Christian and [00:01:00] Ashley. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Christian Lane: Thank you.

Tamara Wilkinson: Christian and Ashley, along with several other students in the law school, have recently co founded a new online resource for students called A Reasonable Standard being for law students.

This website, which was created as part of Monash Law's Ambassador Program, aims to provide various resources to help students navigate their law degrees while prioritizing their mental and physical health. Ashley, Christian, perhaps you can start by telling me a little bit about why you decided to create a reasonable standard.

Ashley Chow: Yeah, of course. So when all of the members of our group from the Law Ambassador Program got together, each of us were really passionate about mental health in some way. And so the idea came about that we wanted to create an open space where we could talk and be really honest about our mental health stories And ultimately to help other people in law school feel less alone.

And so it became this platform that we have now, Reasonable Standard, where [00:02:00] we share our own experiences with mental health, such as depression and anxiety, and even issues such as failing a law unit or being rejected.

Tamara Wilkinson: Which a lot of law students will experience at one point, not another.

Christian Lane: Yeah, and I guess the reason I really wanted to start it it's really great because we all had different reasons for coming together and doing this project.

I felt like there was a real resurgence that had happened in the last two years of talking about mental health and talking about mental illness and how people are affected by it and all these great resources were available. But I guess I felt that, Not just Monash in particular, but there weren't many resources for law students, and it's not exactly like we're the most, oppressed population in the world, but I think that there are problems that we face that don't get talked about and just in my experiences personally dealing with depression and with my friend's experiences dealing with mental illness, I just thought that'd be really great if there was something that was student run, student based for students that all students could access.[00:03:00]

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, I do think the fact that this is It's a student created initiative is really important because it has that nice element of, students taking care of each other, which is almost the opposite of that law school mentality. Sometimes where competition is really heavily prioritized.

Christian Lane: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think we were just discussing a partnership with student disability services here on Monash and they said one of the things they really struggle with. is engaging students because they always feel like they're talking, down to students and students don't really want to reach out for help.

And he said it's really great that there are other students, especially in the law like you said, in the law community where it's really hard sometimes for us to swallow our pride and reach out for help.

Ashley Chow: Yeah, definitely. And as students, as part of the same uni, same faculty We get it.

So it's not like we're just preaching to people just be healthy. And just just work hard and do your work. It's no, like we understand what it's like to have to juggle, four units a semester a part time job and have some semblance of a social life. And also deal with the whole [00:04:00] becoming adults sort of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think when we were trying to decide what this was going to be, our very first Dot point was that we didn't want it to be like another BuzzFeed article or anything like that. We didn't want it to come across faceless and emotionless. Like we wanted it to feel raw and

so I think that's one of the most important Like parts of our platform is that it's not just like five tips to like mindfulness or five ways to work hard. It's about actual stories like I went, I failed this unit and this is how I felt after and this is how I overcame it.

Or I went through depression and this is how I felt and how I came through it. And by being open and sharing your story, Our stories, we give others permission to open up and share their stories.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. It's really important. It helps reduce the stigma of mental health.

Christian Lane: And I think that's the first step that we can take, we don't have any kind of professional qualifications and how to deal with these issues, but if we can help [00:05:00] people open up and if we can help reduce that stigma around talking about it, then people can reach out for help themselves to the people that are qualified that are to help them.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, mental health is really important to both of you. That's one of your key focuses. Can you tell me a bit about why it is that you're both so passionate about mental health and about helping people with their mental health?

Christian Lane: Yeah, sure. Yeah, like I said earlier I went through my own period of depression and it happened when I moved from Brisbane to Melbourne to study law here at Monash.

And I think one of the things that really stuck out to me was really how alone it makes you feel. And I guess when we were thinking about starting this resource, I really wanted it to, to be so anyone else that was going through this at university wouldn't feel as alone and I didn't want to, I didn't want other people to feel like, they had to hide that part of themselves when they came to university.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, it was pretty similar to Christian. Like [00:06:00] when I came into uni, I had this expectation that it was going to be great. And my, my, my life was just starting, but obviously we enter uni around like age 18 and 19. So very like tender, unique time where we're just juggling yet like adulthood, learning how to grow and foster our own social circle that has nothing to do with high school or primary school.

Ashley Chow: And then at the same time, we have to. Do well to get a job and juggling all of those things. And if you feel like you, you aren't doing it well, and if you don't have a decent outlet for all of your feelings, it can definitely, it bottles up. And it leaves you feeling incredibly like really dark and the thing is, I think as humans, whenever we go through like a hardship or a trial, we automatically believe that we are the only ones going through it and that no one else will ever experience it and because of that it just creates the sense of isolation and shame, which, and shame breeds In darkness and then it [00:07:00] just, it leads to bigger things like depression and anxiety.

And so for me, I went through this period where like I had to juggle, yeah, studies and everything. But then I was also in a period where I was losing a lot of friends, which then obviously made me feel even more isolated. So then you start to believe other lies, like I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough.

I'm not smart enough. I'm not worth enough. And also All of that basically, yeah, it makes you feel like crap. And that's why. For us, like we keep hammering on about the stories part, but that's why it's so important. Because when we hear that other people have gone through the same feelings and have felt the same things, it gives us a chance to be like, okay, so I am not the only one.

And that's when the light gets in.

Tamara Wilkinson: It's very often the case that you can be feeling very alone. You can be having these feelings, whether it's trauma. anxiety, panic attacks, and when you can give it a name, all of a sudden it starts to make a lot more sense and you can think about how to combat it [00:08:00] rather than just, like you said feeling like you're not worth enough and believing the lies.

Ashley Chow: Yeah, for example, we recently published an article called like why failure is awesome. And it was basically about a student who failed property A, which obviously is a core unit, so everyone has to do. And she talked about how as a hard working student her whole life, how shattering it was to fail and then watch everybody else move on, which means everyone would know that she failed.

But then she talked about how she had never failed before in her life. So to do that was actually very refreshing. It showed her like what she was made of and it was actually, it was a very endearing article and that was our most popular for a reason because in our law faculty can sometimes be a bit competitive and there's a lot of hush about grades and all that sort of stuff.

So to have someone so openly declare on a very public platform that, that they failed and they were okay, opened the floodgates for the rest of the people in our community to start reaching [00:09:00] out and be like, okay. I want to contribute. I feel better. Like I had a friend who came up to me and said, I actually forwarded that article to a whole bunch of different friends.

And now, because of that, we have been seen across 34 countries.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah, it's almost an act of empowerment to own your failure.

Christian Lane: Yeah. Yeah. And it's so important. And I think especially at university, especially when you're coming into university, you really want to It's really a chance to reinvent yourself and to put out an image to the rest of the world.

And I think because we have that power with social media, we obviously choose to only represent the parts of ourselves that we want people to see. And that just is such a big part of creating that stigma around mental health because you don't see everyone else struggling. You just see, all the glamour and you go on LinkedIn and everyone's succeeding and everyone's got their fancy taglines and Yeah, so and you're right like every time someone reaches out to me or reaches out to us and says you know I really enjoyed this resource.

It's really helped me I'm showing it to my other friends. They always [00:10:00] say like that failing article is why I got into it.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah Very similar to sharing the mental health stories. It's all about reducing that stigma. People fail. It happens. People fail all the time. You don't need to be ashamed. You just need to own it.

Christian Lane: And we're studying like a really hard degree. We're working in these really competitive environments. It's okay. And if anyone's going to fail, it's going to be us. So we don't need to feel ashamed about that.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, absolutely. So another focus on your website, A Reasonable Standard, is on helping international students feel at home here in Melbourne.

Can you talk to me about what some of the challenges are for international students who are starting particularly a law degree here in Australia?

Christian Lane: Yeah, so I'm I came from New Zealand, which isn't exactly that different culturally. I really wanted to start at the international students section actually because I felt really disconnected culturally and literally.

From the international students here at Monash, and there are so many of them, and from the few that I did talk to, [00:11:00] they, that were studying law, they always said that they felt very vulnerable here in Melbourne because they didn't have, they didn't know they didn't even know what rights they had and the rights they did have were really shocking at best.

And yeah, they didn't feel supported by the institutions here, like the LSS that they do a really great job, but I think for international students, it's really easy to, because most international students that come here don't really study law, they study things like business, and they study marketing transferable degrees that they can take back to their home country, but with law, it's very specific so there's not many of them, so they feel quite isolated at times, so I just thought it'd be important because we had two international students in our group, That, that could be something really cool for them.

And we had, we've had a couple international students since then contribute to our website and say how great it's been for them to have access to this resource.

Tamara Wilkinson: And even just recognizing them and recognizing that they are different than, domestic students and they have their own challenges.

That would be very validating. I imagine we see you. [00:12:00] Yeah, definitely.

Ashley Chow: Cause on top of all the other issues I talked about coming to uni, they have so many unique challenges as well. So I think it's a lot harder for them to actually get into law school in the first place. And then they have to pay full fees as well.

And when they come, sometimes, English isn't, their first language or the best. And I remember in one of the articles, an international student said that their lecturer had warned him or the international students in the class that they would have to work twice as hard to get the same grades as say, like a domestic student.

And even even when I do the readings and English is my first language, I still struggle with a lot of the words and the language. So can you imagine with an international student and also, When it comes to getting a job, their obstacles are almost to the point of insurmountable, just because not a lot of law firms want to take on an international student, I've got a really close friend of mine who had to go through that battle, [00:13:00] and it was very hard because she obviously wanted a job to stay in Australia and she wanted to be transparent about the fact that she was international. But a lot of law firms weren't very like open to that.

So we wanted a section for them to feel exactly seen, heard and understood. And also that there are other people who are going through the same thing and who have also come out on the other side.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. And of course, they're also. usually I imagine separated from their families who are back home, so they don't have that support network that many domestic students have.

Christian Lane: And if it's already hard for us to come forward and communicate our problems, imagine being in a country where you don't even speak the first language, you can't articulate your emotions in that way. And when the international student contributed to our website, the article was written and that you could tell in a very simple way because that was the only way it could communicate.

And he, he wanted me. to fix it up and make it Like, flow better and I was like, no, like this is your [00:14:00] story. This is how you've communicated it. And it reads really well because you can tell that it's communicated by someone who can't speak English properly. So yeah it's really great.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. So changing topics slightly, you have some resources available on a reasonable standard for students who've experienced sexual violence on campus. Obviously, this is an issue that affects more than just law students. Why did you find it important to include information about sexual violence on campus as part of your resources?

Christian Lane: Yeah, I can speak on this because I really wanted to have that resource. This is an issue that, which I feel very strongly about because some of my very close friends have been sexually assaulted. One of them who was raped here on campus. residential campus. And I included the resource because I think that for one, it's an issue that as law students, we should be really passionate about because it involves the exercise of justice and injustice in an environment such as university that we have, we can have a lot of power in and a lot of say [00:15:00] in.

And I, yeah, I wanted to write a little something just to hopefully raise a bit of awareness of an issue that is having consequences for university students all over the world. And it has huge implications for your mental health. It completely shatters people. If not directly after it happens, 10, 10 or so years after it happens.

And yeah, it just felt like it needed to be included in a resource such as this.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, I think it's really important. I found that that part of the website really important.

Christian Lane: Yeah.

Tamara Wilkinson: So while this isn't, a feminist project in and of itself. I've noticed that you take account of a lot of intersectionalities on a reasonable standard, including mental health, the fact that students may come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Do you consider that this project has a feminist aspect to it?

Christian Lane: Yeah, I think the, an awareness of mental health in the legal sector, not just for law students has huge implications for how we act towards women in the legal profession. In a purely literal sense. And speaking as a male here women already seem to face an enormous pressure [00:16:00] to have a career, raise a family and conform to traditional standards of femininity and, an awareness of mental health for female professionals and for female law students at least starting out just seems to be the very least we could do to try and address some of these really problematic standards that we're held to.

Ashley Chow: And even like I was listening, I think to a podcast and it was saying how for example, Men, when they experience a setback or failure or whatever, they like to believe it's because of external sources to themselves. So they'll say things like, okay, like my business failed because the economy wasn't great or something external and something external.

Whereas women, when we fail, we all, when we experience a setback, it's automatically, we think it's our fault. There's something wrong with us. And obviously. That has such huge implications for our mental health. We're more likely to experience shame. We're more likely to experience those lies I was talking about, like they were not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough.

And our website, most of our [00:17:00] contributors, I think, yeah, have been female. And we, and women are beautiful in that we get to experience a whole spectrum and range of emotions, as well as men. But I think it's Our project is feminist in the sense that we allow women a safe space to share their stories.

Christian Lane: And I think it, yeah, it's a it's funny to talk about like that because I think one, and a contributor recently wrote about this, about how there's a stigma just for men to try and open up about this. So yeah, I think, with feminism being at its core an equal opportunity for everyone.

This resource that we've created is just an example of us trying to do that in the best way that we can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Given that this is the podcast of the feminist legal group, would you guys consider yourselves to be feminists?

Ashley Chow: Yeah I believe in men and [00:18:00] women having equal opportunities, yeah, both structurally for example, obviously with equal pay and equal opportunities to, climb the ladder or reach the same positions.

Also, just emotionally as well I don't like how, for example, Whenever a woman does something that seemed to be a little out of character for a woman, it's automatically deemed as like crazy or erratic or just like typical woman. Emotional. Yeah and I think like it didn't really hit me as hard until that whole issue with the Kavanaugh nominations in America when Christine Blasey Ford came forward.

And it was just all over my Twitter. And it was, I was just very, appalled by the fact that she wasn't being heard, like there were a lot of women, like strong, powerful women rallying around her, for example like Glennon Doyle and like Oprah, but [00:19:00] there was so many. And even like other women who would just denounce her or criticize her and make fun of her.

And then the fact that he got nominated like anyway it was just really hard. And even just like on a, like simpler things, like for example, in a lot of business podcasts, it's almost always men that are interviewed. And even when they do get. Someone like a female CEO or a female, like manager they ask her things like, so how do you deal with work life balance or who's taking care of the kids while you're at work?

Whereas the men, never get asked, how do you deal with work life balance and how much time do you spend with your kids? Yeah.

Tamara Wilkinson: And it can be a real issue for women. Entering any profession, but including the legal profession, Even though the law says you're not allowed to discriminate based on your amount or a woman whether you want kids or not I imagine that for many women who are of childbearing age, you know That is gonna [00:20:00] factor into the decision of whether they're hired or not.

Ashley Chow: And it even works sometimes like against that so for example, even If a woman or a female does get elevated to a high position, sometimes people will just be like, it's because she's a girl and they're trying to be fair. And so there's no win, it's just going to be really hard to navigate, but I'm glad that we're in this like 2018, we're still behind, but at least we're slowly recognizing it and being aware and slowly trying to change our mindset towards it.

Christian Lane: Yeah. And it seems to be like at least from the people that I've talked to that the way the legal sector is moving with this integration of technology and moving away from these traditional standards of what a law firm needs to look like and how legal professionals need to act. We're seeing a lot more awareness of things like mental health, but also social justice issues such as female representation in law firms.

One of the examples is, new law firms that are trying to be more Trying to attract more female lawyers, what they do is that they, instead of having a [00:21:00] traditional hierarchy of, partner, senior lawyer junior lawyer, paralegal, all of that, they have just a flat structure.

So an example is Legal Vision, and we interviewed the partner at Legal Vision Emma Houston, and one of the things she said is that, that those structures are really great because it gets rid of that authority. And those power embellishments that are so often used by men to, to do horrible things.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. The role that new law is starting to play is really interesting. I don't know a lot about it because it started after,

yeah, it's only started in the last two years and it's really interesting to just watch it organically develop. I think it's becoming something a lot bigger than people thought it would turn out to be.

So it's really nice.

Tamara Wilkinson: I think that really shows that like the legal profession has that drive to change Yeah, maybe not all of the profession, but at least the up and coming, yeah students who are graduating from monash

Christian Lane: I think it's interesting because I think it was eric wilson who is an academic here said that I went to a [00:22:00] talk I think it was earlier this year and he was talking about how the law is inherently conservative.

It's always trying to preserve and it's trying to always looking back. And I think while that's really important, I think equally as important is for the law always to look forward. And it's really great to see that happening now. Yeah. Yeah.

Tamara Wilkinson: It is. Although both of you have a couple of years left of your degrees, do you have any idea of where you'd like the future to take you once you finish studying?

Ashley Chow: I would really like to start exploring my creativity more often. I find that sometimes, It's, depending what degree you get into, uni really repressed that for me, and it's only recently I've decided to discover it, especially with starting up the A Reasonable Standard platform and because for me, I strongly believe, words have power and I just love, I really want to cultivate that.

this whole being open and honest so that we can help others. So I guess I'd really like to go into more like a content creation sort of role. And I guess with [00:23:00] law, I would love to work, yeah, I got a new law firm, where I can, where it's more adaptable. It's more flexible. Empathy is very important in new law and where my contributions and my value will be based on like outcomes and not how much I can build.

Yeah, that's me.

Christian Lane: Yeah, if you want to contact Ashley you can find Yeah, following in on that I think yeah, like you were saying university can really at times feel like it does It's really restricting your creativity. And I think that's what I really enjoyed about the Law Ambassador Program was that it created a space for students to actually be creative.

And I think that's one of the most important skills it seems to be for lawyers now and law students is to be creative because we're dealing with some very different problems that law students even 10 years ago had to deal with. And I think being able to think outside the box, think about what, how you can integrate it into [00:24:00] skills outside of the skills that you learn at university, such as your creativity and your own personal perspective into the legal profession is becoming more and more important.

Ashley Chow: Yeah. And I think I think it sounds both Christian and I starting to learn that we don't have to do exactly what everyone else is doing, but I think it was really hammered into us that it's like, Okay, you graduate law school, you get into a clerkship, you get into a grad job, and then the rest of your life will happen.

But whereas for me, I'm starting to learn and recognize the beauty of just being able to create my own my own, yeah, my own lifestyle, my own work choices based off my strengths and weakness. Yeah.

Christian Lane: Yeah, and it seems to be that the professionals and the people that we've met In this project that are really enjoying their lives and trailblazing in the legal sector.

The way they ended up in those positions wasn't by following this preset mold that they learned in university. It was just by following what they thought they were good at and their passions and, always being humble in their achievements and being creative and learning on the fly [00:25:00] and always enjoying the moment.

So I think, for me personally that, It seems that's going to be what I focus on, at least for the next 10 years.

Tamara Wilkinson: Fantastic. Christian, Ashley, thank you so much for joining me on the Scarlet Letter today. I wish you all the best with A Reasonable Standard and your future careers, which I'm sure will be stellar.

To our listeners, you can find a reasonable standard at reasonable standard. com as well as on Facebook and Instagram. Thank you all for listening to this episode of The Scarlet Letter. You can catch us again next month on iTunes or on our blog, which is found at feministlegalstudies. wordpress. com. And don't forget to subscribe to The Scarlet Letter to make sure you never miss an [00:26:00] episode.