Tia enhanced her legal expertise with a Master of Laws tailored to her goals

After eight years practising as a corporate and infrastructure lawyer at one of Indonesia's top-tier firms, Tia felt the pull to go deeper. During that time, she advised governments on major infrastructure projects and assisted private sector clients through mergers, acquisitions and capital markets work. But the longer she practised, the more she felt the pull to go deeper.

As a lawyer, I need to keep learning — not only the theoretical foundation, but also the practical things. I wanted to gain international best practice and be prepared for the future challenges.

Her research into public–private partnerships (PPPs), her specialist area, led her to one conclusion: Melbourne Law School. It was one of only a handful of universities worldwide offering courses in PPPs, and for Tia, that specificity mattered. She wanted a program she could shape around her professional goals.

What she found exceeded her expectations. The ability to tailor her subjects as a general Master of Laws student meant every class connected directly to her work as an infrastructure lawyer. And the teaching, she says, operated on a different level entirely – practitioners and leading academics didn't just explain the theory, they had lived it.

I'm very privileged to learn not only the critical foundations, but also the international best practice from those who applied them in the real world.

The cohort has been its own kind of education. Studying alongside lawyers, engineers, journalists and policy specialists from across the globe has reshaped the way Tia approaches a legal problem, as she now sees it from multiple angles, not just through the lens of Indonesia's civil law system. Adapting to common law was one of her steepest early challenges, but her peers made the transition feel shared rather than solitary.

As international students, we face the same problems. But we are very supportive to each other.

When her family experienced a loss last year, she found support she hadn't anticipated from MLS staff, who reached out and helped her find her footing again. It is that quality – the sense that people genuinely care – that she comes back to when describing what makes this place different.

Outside the classroom, Tia has embraced everything Melbourne has offered, from day trips to Hobart, which she described as “more beautiful than anywhere I've visited”, to long study sessions with friends on the mezzanine floor of the Law School building. She returns to Indonesia after graduation with a clear vision: to establish a research centre in public–private partnerships and become the kind of expert to whom government can turn when infrastructure decisions need to be made well.