1,500-Word Essay Prepares Graduate for 78-Page Affidavit

30th June 2026

MELBOURNE — A law graduate who completed a 1,500-word essay on International Comparative Legal Theory at Southgate University has confirmed the experience prepared her for practice.

Emma Whitfield, 24, is currently on day four of taking instructions from a director who is alleged to have caused a company to trade while insolvent across three years, during which time he made 214 bank transfers totalling approximately $4.3 million to entities in which he held an undisclosed interest. Emma is taking him through each transfer in chronological order, recording his instructions, and drafting the affidavit he will ultimately swear.

“At university I really learned how to research,” Whitfield said. “You had to engage with a lot of different sources and synthesise them into a coherent argument. That’s a skill that stays with you.”
The affidavit is currently 78 pages. It is not finished.
“They also taught us that every piece of writing needs a clear introduction, a body, and a conclusion,” Whitfield said. “And that good legal writing weighs competing arguments and arrives at a reasoned position. Structure is everything.”
The affidavit does not have an introduction. It opens with the deponent’s name, address, and occupation, followed by a statement that he makes the affidavit from his own knowledge except where otherwise stated. It does not weigh competing arguments. Paragraph three begins with transfer number one.

“My essay looked at how different legal systems approach the incorporation of international treaties,” Whitfield said. “Monist systems, dualist systems, the theoretical frameworks underneath them. I spent a lot of time with the secondary literature. It was genuinely challenging.”

Each factual paragraph in the affidavit is cross-referenced to an exhibit. The exhibits currently number 52. They include the company’s constitution, its share register, four years of board minutes, loan agreements with three separate lenders, ASIC correspondence, and 340 pages of bank statements sorted and tabulated by date, entity, and amount. The exhibit index runs to eleven pages. The exhibits have been physically tabbed and assembled in ring binders by document type. Emma assembled the binders. Emma did the tabs. “I also completed a jurisprudence unit,” Whitfield said. “Hart, Fuller, Dworkin. Understanding the philosophical foundations of legal systems. I think that analytical training is exactly what you need when you go into practice.”
She has not been home since Tuesday.

The director has now given three different accounts of transfer number 47. Emma has recorded all three. She will return to transfer number 47 after transfer number 214, at which point she will put the bank statement to him and ask him to reconcile the discrepancy. He will not be able to.
“Obviously this is more pages than my essay,” Whitfield said. “But the underlying skills are the same.”
Southgate University’s Faculty of Law said its graduates were consistently competitive in the graduate recruitment market and that the Class of 2024 had achieved a placement rate of 84 percent.
The Faculty noted that International Comparative Legal Theory remained one of its most popular electives.

This article is satire and does not constitute an introduction, a conclusion, or an exhibit index.