I listen to lawyer Sarah Galbally talk and all I can think is ‘I wish I could download your brain for a day!’.
Effortlessly intelligent, she can switch between, fun, loving empathetic mother-of-two into shrewd, savvy boss-lady that you definitely wouldn’t want to mess with in a legal battle.
Sarah comes from a long bloodline of famous Australian lawyers, well known for landmark court cases. Just google Frank (grandfather) or uncles David, Paul and Francis Galbally and you’ll see what I mean.
They’re known for taking on some of the toughest of tough cases. So boy does she have some handy mentors.
Her resume is impressive to say the least – with more than 15 years’ experience in the law, working for big names such as the AFL, Cricket Australia, Fox Fm and Triple M – and I must say I was pretty excited to hear about her having middle of the night legal talks with Taylor Swift and a quiet convo legal chat in Melbourne with Kim Kardashian.
Originally from bayside Melbourne, Sarah has called Geelong home for the past 10 years and is now director and principal lawyer of Neon Legal law firm in Pakington Street.
Name: Sarah Galbally
Occupation: Lawyer (and #BossMum)
Kids: Tom – “He is my kind and quiet studious achiever, lover of footy cards, and passionate about playing soccer.”
Sadie – “She is certainly filled with kindness and joy. If you squeezed her, glitter and unicorns would spill out.”
My happy place is…Anywhere by the water, at the beach, with my kids. Having access to so many fabulous beach spots just a short drive away is a huge benefit of living here.
Favourite coffee in Geelong: On the weekend we love to walk to our local Funk. We can sit out in the garden with a milkshake and coffee. The guys have delicious home-made treats and it’s a lovely way to start the weekend with fresh air and calm vibes. Check it out – that’s my tip!
My hidden talent is…I suppose it’s that I speak French, although I am rusty! My stats on Wordle are looking good at the moment!
Chocolate or cheese? Most definitely it is both! I have a sweet tooth and Tom has certainly inherited that from me. He even has managed to pull a lollypop out of his pocket today I see….kids!
A book you love: As a lawyer, my days are filled with reading, so it is not my go-to unless I am on holiday. I have a few books on the bed side waiting to be opened – not sure if or when that will happen!
A movie you love: I love movies – I have a few that I watch on repeat. But recently I have been known to binge a TV series in record time.Succession, Veep, The White Lotus, Schitts Creek.
Mantra: ‘Your girlfriends make the world go round!’ I am a huge believer in the strength of the women in your life being so important. It is always the women who get you through all the different stages of your life, and I know it to be true. I don’t now what I would do without my mum, my daughter, my business partner and my best girl friends – they are all so important to my happiness.
What advice would you have for new parents? My business partner Shannon is soon to have her first baby – which is so exciting! So I was actually thinking about this in the last few weeks and the primary thing that I always come back to is: Don’t read all the baby books when you’re pregnant! Certainly learn and educate yourself, speak to your friends who have been mums recently, but do what works for you and your child, and what works for your family. Put what works for you before what people say is the ‘best way’ to do something. What works for you may not be what works best for the next person, and that’s OK. Don’t overload yourself with parenting books and information. The mental load of the huge volume of advice alone will give you anxiety! Take it day by day and do what works for you and your child.
Let’s go back to life before children. What was life like in the Galbally house for you growing up?
Growing up in our house was great fun! My brother Nick and I were, and still are, super close. Childhood with him was always happy. He is a very smart and kind person, and Tom reminds me so much of him, even to look at, so much that sometimes I call Tom, Nick! Perhaps I am lacking in sleep on those days!
My parents took us on lots of holidays throughout Australia and to Europe. As kids we spent summers in Sorrento and Point Lonsdale, and Septembers were spent on the beach at Broadbeach and Noosa. Hence my love for the beach! I think that same spark for the ocean and beach trips with my kids is from how I remember growing up and I have always taken my kids on holidays to Queensland.
What were you like in school?
I loved school. I went to small girls school, St Catherine’s, in Melbourne from kinder all the way through to Year 12. I was studious at school. I really enjoyed reading, history, literature, drama, languages.
What motivated you to become a lawyer?
As my surname suggests – I had no choice!!
No, no, to be serious, it was not my initial intention to become a lawyer.
I do come from a family of lawyers, however it was not a path that I thought I would pursue – well, not initially.
Looking to university, I was interested in pursuing a career in journalism or script writing. Because of my love of literature and humanities, I applied for a Deans Arts scholarship at Monash University, and at the end of Year 12 I was offered a place for a double bachelor’s degree in arts and law.
It was my mum who said to me that I should at least give the first year of arts/law a try and see if I enjoyed it.
Once I started it just all fell into place. It was certainly the path I was meant to take, and I never reconsidered my decision.
I genuinely love my work, and the interesting and creative people that I work with both in my own law firm and our clients.
It’s given me such an interesting and wonderful career, and I know the future is always exciting in my line of work.
I particularly love the entrepreneurial side to my clients that take us into specialised areas of marketing and consumer law, and I have loved working in talent and creative spaces as a lawyer, the big rights deals, and acting in negotiations for clients…there is always something exciting and interesting that we are working on for our clients.
Neon Legal is such a fab name! Tell us about your business?
Neon Legal is a law firm I founded. I now have a business partner, Shannon Landers, and we have created a dynamic law firm that is not traditional.
We offer flexible in-house style legal services. Sometimes we work as part of an internal legal team, remotely, and sometimes our lawyers take client work similar to a traditional law firm, on demand.
Some businesses outsource their entire internal legal services to us, like a freelance general counsel.
We have a top tier brand – our lawyers have high calibre experience in both in-house teams and private practice.
We are that hybrid for business as usual and project-based legal work. We work with large Australian household brands, and even startups.
Why did you decide to start Neon Legal and how has it grown?
Well there is a bit of history to why I started Neon Legal back in 2016. It was primarily for lifestyle reasons and all came about because I became a mother.
Ultimately it was a very positive next step into the next stage of my career. We are a modern law firm because I wanted to create dynamic landscape to act for interesting clients.
It was a practical decision but it was ultimately my desire to do it in a way that I could see scope for innovation and that drove my decision making and gave me the impetus to start Neon Legal.
I mix with a diverse range of businesses and people that are innovative and it was a path that I wanted to follow with them – a far more interesting path than the nine-to-five corporate gig in a black suit.
When I worked at as a national senior lawyer for Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), Australia’s largest entertainment company, I loved every day in my six years there. I was surrounded by not only music but a diverse world of creativity.
That is what interests me and excites me. And that sparked my desire to more away from the traditional law firm to a more stimulating world.
To go back, I was pregnant with my first child, and working at SCA I was commuting to Melbourne from Geelong five days a week, and to Sydney each fortnight as part of my legal team were based in Sydney and I needed to be visible.
As a media and entertainment commercial lawyer, I was up and ready to ‘legal’ breakfast radio for Triple M and Fox FM nationally – primarily for Melbourne and Sydney stations.
The early hours of breakfast radio meant that my days started about 4.30am because of a daily commute to Melbourne. This was fine before I had children!
But then, the circumstances in which I had Tom played a big part in my life decisions and made me think that the next stage of my career had to adapt to the way I wanted to live my life as a mother and still have a creative interesting career as a lawyer.
I had Tom at 32 weeks of my pregnancy – early! Due to sudden onset of pre-eclampsia. It was very unexpected. We both spent some weeks in hospital in Melbourne and eventually I was able to take my little 4-pound premmie home.
It because obvious to me that having a young baby and commuting to Melbourne for work was not going to provide me with flexibility I needed in my life as a new mum.
While on maternity leave I decided that I would resign from Southern Cross Austereo and start Neon Legal. It was a necessary next step in my career and it was so exciting to me.
I started Neon Legal as a sole practitioner and I had core clients in the areas of sport, entertainment and technology.
About two years later I had my second child, Sadie. My pregnancy with her was high risk as I had medical complications that were being monitored by various specialists. During this time I managed to adapt work to accommodate home life.
Soon Sadie arrived. Again it was high drama, emergency… (I don’t like drama!). This time I had a medical complication from a variant form of preeclampsia and after a brief stint in ICU in Geelong, but I was very fortunate to leave hospital with another healthy little 36-week premmie.
An opportunity presented for me to manage an alternative legal services business in Melbourne with Lawyers on Demand. It was an exciting prospect and as a sole practitioner I had missed the action of a busy law firm environment.
So with day care and some family help in place, I decided to try part time work and I put Neon Legal on pause.
Life was very organised to make it all work and it was not without pressure… and then the pandemic hit.
The pandemic reminded me how much easier life was to be local and flexible, without commuting.
So with that, my two-year stint of part-time commuting to Melbourne and working from home was complete.
In 2020 I decided that it was time to reinvigorate Neon Legal, it was a very deliberate next step in my career.
With Tom starting school in 2021 it was the perfect time to build the law firm and have the flexibility that my home life needed to manage school hours and allow me that flexibility to be a mother and make it work for our lives.
Shannon joined me in 2021, and again it was a natural progression to have a business partner with the same mindset to work and life.
She also has an entrepreneurial spirit and we have been friends for some years – she was head of legal at Cotton On for many years and used to brief me in work.
Our life priorities align and we love the exciting opportunities that business presents.
I am sure that my story – to find that balance so you can be a mother in that way you want to and yet have a great and fulfilling career – is a similar story for so many women.
Again, I simply chose to put my children first and build the life that I want to live, a happy life, that is balanced so that I can be present as a mum and continue to pursue an interesting career.
You are a single mum, running her own business and raising two gorgeous children. How do you make it all work?
I make a conscious decision to make it work. Literally. I am very conscious of making decisions to make life the way I want to live it, for me and for my children.
I always put what works for us, for me and for the children, first. And that’s not negotiable.
And when it doesn’t all work, I have learnt to simply embrace the imperfect. Sure, I might have to get groceries delivered at the last minute (I just did!) or I may have been able to pre-organise meals for the entire week and be very organised in a routine. Either way, I simply choose not to worry about it.
I also try not to over-complicate things and not to over-commit. Home time is calm space, its relaxed and happy, we enjoy the simple things and prioritise time with family and friends.
Actually, we have a disco light that we often put in the kitchen and we just play music, have a crazy dance and laugh. Those times of play and joy with little kids are so fun.
Sure, it is a busy life for me in many respects, but it’s very balanced and my focus is on my children.
I think a big part of it is that I am not ‘in a rush’. I love those little conversations with my kids about the world and having the time in the present to have those chats is so special.
My business plays a critical part in making it work. I have made a conscious effort to set up my commitments with work and the business so that it all works to our life, for me, as I need it to.
I am able to drop and pick up from school – if I were commuting for work that would not be possible, so its really wonderful that Neon Legal is able to provide that life for me and the kids, and I work hard to ensure that it continues.
The pandemic certainly helped that shift in mindset for our clients – we need to be contactable and we have strong relationship with our clients to make that work for their needs, too.
It hasn’t mattered where we were based, we can deliver what they need remotely.
What do you think are the key ingredients to making a successful business?
The success of our business to date has been that we are different from the traditional law firm because we believe that being dynamic is of value to our clients.
The way we deliver legal services to our clients that are not traditional and it works for our clients – best of all it works for us. That is a unique proposition in our industry, but its been necessary for us, and we have shown that it works.
We have creative and interesting clients who are innovative, and we have shown that we have a similar mindset by turning a traditional law firm model into something that has adapted for a modern way of working and lifestyles.
Our business is well… very busy. The adage is still true – find a busy lawyer, it’s a good sign of their skills and value when they are in demand.
Whether we are working remotely for Ashai or Carlton United Breweries, or locally for Cotton On or the City of Greater Geelong on site, all the way to the Western Bulldogs Football Club to multi national cyber encryption organisations, its been important for us also to be connected to start ups in the local region and develop our local ties to emerging entrepreneurs.
We have also made good local networks in our industry with an Internship program with the law school at Deakin Uni, and we have good local clients who we have worked with for a long time to the extent that we feel like part of their business.
Do you have any future goals you can share?
Well it’s 2023 and both my kids are now at school – I cannot believe it! I have a few goals planned out for us at home, a few creative projects for the house and some holidays.
I have plans for Neon Legal to develop over the next two years which we are working on now. We currently have a team of five and hope to further expand soon.
Actually, I recently embarked on a very cool new opportunity which I am quietly confident will take shape in the next few years and open a new business path for Shannon and I. Keep an eye out, we have only just started!
If you have a small business or side hustle that you want make your primary gig, you can find Sarah and her legal team at www.neonlegal.com.au.
