Stephanie Nomikos has just completed her Law and Justice Internship with Wine Australia

Stephanie Nomikos has just completed her summer internship with Wine Australia as part of the Law School’s Law and Justice Internship.

Two months interning with the legal team at Wine Australia and I’m officially done! Everyone has been lovely and I've learned so much about Wine Law whilst further developing my legal skills. 

My half-decade working in hospitality has definitely sparked an interest in local / Australian / international wines, so seeing it from a legal perspective during my internship has been awesome.

The work was interesting and it was rewarding to be involved in real-world legal tasks.

On my first day, I was fortunate enough to observe a meeting in which an Interim Determination was made. It was exciting to see the real-world application of Administrative law! From here, I drafted correspondence to concerned parties on behalf of my supervisor. It was rewarding to see my work being sent off by my supervisor to real parties.

In my final week, we received a freedom of information (FOI) request in relation to the Interim Determination. I completed legal research on relevant FOI exemptions and completed further draft correspondence to the parties once a decision had been made. Since FOI requests need to be dealt with quickly, I felt like my work had a real impact on helping out my supervisor. In relation to the Interim Determination, I was very lucky to get to see such a related chain of events from the start of my internship to the end!

Aside from this, I completed various other day-to-day tasks such as a compliance summary with the Wine Australia Act 2013, a definition inquiry into whether a particular wine should be classified a ‘fruit wine’ or ‘wine product’, prepared a presentation on Wine Australia’s policies, conducted a trademark search using IP Australia, and any other tasks my supervisor required.

I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Rachel Triggs and Amy Ward, not only for the time they've invested into hosting me but for being role models and mentors who I can look up to. Thanks also to Laura Grenfell for coordinating.

To anyone at the Adelaide Law School considering a Law and Justice Internship but daunted to apply / unsure where to start / what to expect, please reach out! I couldn't recommend this experience higher.

Many thanks to Wine Australia for its ongoing generosity in supervising Adelaide Law School interns.