In the last year of his undergraduate degree Khiem began the start-up business Provey legal – a property and conveyancing firm that, by adapting to technological advancements, developed an online portal to provide legal services to their clients.

Khiem began his law degree at Monash with no expectations other than that it was a good law school. However, after finding law School challenging for the first two years, Khiem began to realise the advantages of a law degree and has used the skills he learnt to achieve his goals of building a successful business.

 

​

How has your experiences at Monash law school helped you to where you are now?

To be honest for the first two years I was probably the worst law student there, but I soon came to understand the advantages of having a law degree. You really hone in on your communication skills, your comprehension and analytical thinking. I certainty gained a lot from the Monash law course. Law school made me a better thinker – I assess risks better than I did before. However, it also teaches you to be conservative at times, which can hinder attempts to aggressively grow a business, although such an approach can lead to the making of mistakes. I am not as aggressive as other entrepreneurs, but I am here today because of a balance of conservative and risk-taking approaches.

 

I wasn’t involved in any extra-curricular activities, but I maintained a really strong social circle. I also did a lot of travelling and completed the Prato program as well - this was great. Based on that, I built a lot of relationships and that has helped a great deal when establishing a business because if you have got strong relationships with good friends, who turn out to be good clients who refer other clients it definitely gives you a good foundation to start a business. Although at the time I didn’t calculate it that way, I was just a very social person.

 

​

How did the idea for Provey Legal come about?

I come from a Vietnamese background, so when they know that you are a law student they don’t say you’re a law student, they say you are a lawyer already. Conveyancing is an area that a lot of people transact in, so a lot of my family members would come to me asking for help as they did not like the conveyancer's they were using, to which I had to decline to help them because I wasn’t qualified, nor did I know anything about conveyancing.

But I then read up about it. I did market research and search the firms around the local Springvale area as well as the larger firms and it seemed like they were kind of working in the stone ages. Not a very entrepreneurial or progressive industry, so I thought, well, there might be an opportunity here – and there was.

The seed funding came from my mum, she gave me $1000 to invest in online marketing. Then I built the website by myself and set up a telephone system. I found the practising partner to provide the advice by essentially ‘door knocking’, he was local and practising conveyancing in Clayton. He was a great guy and was really open and receptive. You just have to put yourself out there and may be rejected many times before you’re not.

 

​

What were the challenges you faced in the beginning as an entrepreneur and student/law graduate?

Being young myself, I was probably ahead of myself when it came to my own expectations of what customers wanted – they want something new age, but the challenge was that there are clients who don’t want it – they want the old school personal touch, and some people simply don’t like using emails. However, over the 8-9 years the industry has completely changed, people have started to adopt the technology and begun to be comfortable using electronic platforms to complete things – and with electronic conveyancing they are forced to now. So in a way, it was an initial challenge, but thankfully we persisted through and now we are in a position where we are ahead of the rest.

Also, I have never lost sight that I wanted to build something, so I think I am just constantly excited about building a business. You set baby step goals and then your long term goals, some you will meet and some you don’t, but having that interest and passion goes a long way.

 

 

What is your advice for current/future law students?

Attend lectures and tutorials, but also remember University does not define you, much like high school. Law school can be a stepping stone to other careers so if you are open to other industries, definitely do it.

 

Manage your expectations of where your career is going to be, you may or may not practice, and you may fall into something you really love, so roll with it.

 

And University is a good time for start-ups, I am happy I did it. I have peers who now want to do it but feel too tied to their current jobs to take the risk. Even if the idea fails or you don’t follow it through completely, it gives you good experience and knowledge that you can use as a stepping stone into something else after you graduate.