Law was not how Andrew Byrnes Law Group’s Himangi Ticku planned to make her mark. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
At 28, Himangi Ticku made junior partner at Andrew Byrnes Law Group – well before the average age of 40.
It’s the kind of promotion that raises eyebrows, unless you know the stories of this lawyer and her firm.
Himangi was 17 when she left the heaving crowds and 40-degree heat of Delhi to arrive in a ghostly, minus 1-degree Canberra.
The Australian National University (ANU) had been the quickest university to snap up the gifted young mind with a scholarship for a Bachelor’s Degree and Masters combined in international relations and political science. Law was not on her radar.
“I was at that age when everyone thinks they can save the world. My career in law was almost incidental,” she says.
While completing units in criminology and criminal law, a lecturer planted the idea that Himangi had the type of mind to excel at law. Towards the end of her degree she made the “somewhat impulsive decision to give it a shot”.
That decision was vindicated in her second year when Himangi started volunteering with Prisoners Aid, a Canberra organisation working with detainees and their families to better prepare them for post-release life.
Himangi credits this volunteering experience with rounding off her education, giving her an “on-the-ground reality check” of how our justice system works and allowing her to approach the practice of criminal law with a balance of empathy, objectivity and practicality.
“It gave me an advanced outlook of what life is like in and after prison,” she says.
“I knew if I ended up working as a criminal lawyer, the world wouldn’t necessarily be a better place and I wouldn’t necessarily always be right. But if I did my work with sincerity and honesty, and it had a ripple effect on the people I worked for, that would be a way to be of service to the community I lived in.”
Himangi continued volunteering for Prisoner’s Aid even after taking on her first full-time job as a practising lawyer for Legal Aid – a baptism by fire. On the Family Violence team, she dove headlong into domestic and family violence and sexual assault matters.
Specifically she worked in early intervention, which meant two to three days a week as a “duty lawyer” at court, securing urgent personal and child protection orders.
“As a duty lawyer it doesn’t matter if a person is eligible for legal aid or not – you help. So people would rush into court because they were feeling unsafe and I was the person who needed to get them interim protection,” she says.
“On my busiest day I counted more than 10 appearances in court. It was stressful, intense but so fulfilling.
“Family and domestic violence is a unique area of the law where you’re exposed to both criminal and civil matters. You’re expected to know the basics of all these different branches of the law but if you survive the first months, and get to the other side, you can steer clear of tunnel vision.”
Word of this young lawyer’s fearless advocacy in the community and public sectors carried to Andrew Byrnes Law Group – a relatively young firm quickly carving out a reputation of its own.
“When I interviewed Himangi, it was very clear she had a truly unique combination of a few factors that made her one of a kind,” Andrew says.
“She is totally fearless in taking on a challenging case and challenging legal argument. She is not one to shy away from getting the prosecution offside in order to defend her client’s rights.
“Himangi understands that our mission at Andrew Byrnes Law Group is to deliver for Canberra and surrounds a client experience that is deliberately different and that to do so, our mission is to make ourselves accessible and understandable by clients. Our lawyers need to have no ego at all.”
It took a while for Himangi to get used to the “business side” of things in her first foray into private practice. But she found her start in family violence gave her an edge at a law firm that represented applicants and respondents.
“Understanding how both a complainant and defendant feels in a matter is a huge advantage,” she says.
For more information contact Andrew Byrnes Law Group.
