At this week’s Queensland Law Society’s Legal Careers Expo, amid the buzz of clerkships, career maps and quiet anxiety about getting it right, one voice cut through with something rarer, permission to slow down.
Rachael Karlyl doesn’t look, or sound, like the caricature of a lawyer many students expect. A government lawyer with 16 years’ experience, Rachael is also a career coach and speaker who has built a reputation for helping lawyers reconnect with purpose before burnout forces the issue.
“I thought I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore, that was around 2018, 2019. And yet here I am, six years later, still practising.”
That apparent contradiction sits at the heart of Rachael’s work. Her coaching practice wasn’t born from a desire to leave the law, but from surviving it.
A career that taught her about people
Rachael’s legal career began, like many others, with uncertainty and grit. As a 20‑year‑old law student, she worked one day a week, for free, at a criminal law firm specialising in sexual offences.
“I still remember my first day in court,” she laughed. “I asked my boss if I had to wear stockings. He just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know, do you?’”
The humour belies the intensity of the work. At an early age, Rachael learned how to deal with people in crisis, clients facing serious criminal charges, families unravelling, lives at breaking point.
“That’s where I first learned how to handle people, not just law.”
From there, she moved through crime and migration law, eventually landing at a large international firm where she spent seven years. The opportunities were extraordinary, working across almost every capital city in the country, visiting immigration detention centres, assisting refugees, and litigating extensively in the tribunal space.
Looking back, she sees how each chapter quietly prepared her for what she does now.
“At the time, you don’t connect the dots. You only see it when you’re far enough down the track.”
But the same environment that sharpened her skills also took its toll.
“It was also where I burnt out.”
When success stops feeling successful
Burnout did not arrive politely. It came alongside difficult bosses, relentless pressure, personal upheaval and divorce. Eventually, Rachael stepped away from legal practice altogether and enrolled in an MBA, convinced law was no longer for her.
What followed was a complicated, honest reassessment of ambition.
She returned to the profession in different forms, managing a legal practice during COVID, running a migration business while borders were closed, later owning her own firm. On paper, she was ticking success boxes many lawyers still chase.
In reality, something was still misaligned.
“I realised owning a firm wasn’t my definition of success, it was someone else’s. I did it because I knew law things, so it seemed like the next logical step.”
The work she loved most wasn’t the legal grind; it was mentoring juniors, building systems, supporting people, mapping ideas on walls filled with post‑it notes.
“That took me a year to admit to myself,” she said.
Career coaching without judgment
Rachael eventually moved into government litigation, building and mentoring a team of 10. Alongside the day job, she began running wellbeing seminars internally, responding to what she describes as a workforce that was “not burned out, but not settled either”.
That same ethos carried her naturally into career coaching.
“I don’t think people come to me because I have all the answers, I think they come because I’m kind and because they don’t feel judged.”
Many clients, she notes, are surprised by how much freedom they have.
“I’ll say, ‘Let’s talk about your goals,’ and they’ll respond with, ‘But what if I fail?’ And I’m like, so what? They’re your goals.”
Her coaching focuses on helping clients interpret what their ‘inner work’ is telling them their outer career path should be, something she wishes she had learned earlier herself.
“I had to hit rock bottom first. I don’t think that should be a prerequisite.”
Changing the culture, one conversation at a time
Rachael is blunt about the wider profession’s challenges: burnout, poor mental health, substance abuse and suicide.
“I don’t think it needs to get that bad. If lawyers understood their values and purpose earlier, we wouldn’t see so many people reaching crisis point before making changes.”
At the QLS Legal Careers Expo, her presence was deliberately grounded. No glossy promises. No rigid pathways. Just honest conversations.
“If you want the truth about what could happen in your career, come talk to me.”
For Rachael, success has shifted shape entirely.
“It used to be the big firm, the money, the prestige. Now it’s impact.”
She pauses. “And honestly? That feels better than any salary ever did.”
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