A 26-year-old Melbourne-based junior lawyer, Natali Curukovski, has said she was dismissed from her job just days after posting a viral TikTok video in which she criticised long working hours, workplace pressure, low pay and burnout within the legal profession.
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Curukovski had reportedly been practising law for only about three weeks when she uploaded the two-minute video describing her experience as a newly admitted lawyer and questioning whether she wanted to remain in the profession.
“I feel like I just have to be really, really honest,” she began.
“I knew this was coming, and I knew I’d feel this way, but I’m really just not loving it.”
Before becoming a practising lawyer, Curukovski had spent years studying and had also worked as a paralegal.
Having finally been admitted into the Australian legal profession, she said the realities of working as a junior lawyer quickly became apparent.
“The constant deadlines, the pressure, the working after hours… there’s no freedom,” she said.
“You’re overworked and underpaid for the amount of study you put in.”
According to Curukovski, meaningful flexibility often becomes available only much later in a lawyer’s career, after accumulating enough years of experience to negotiate better working arrangements.
She said her early experience had also helped her understand why law was widely associated with high levels of burnout.
“Honestly, I don’t want to subscribe to that. It really is a soul-sucking job,” she said.
Curukovski ended the original video by advising young people considering a legal career to “think again” before committing themselves to the profession.
The video quickly went viral, attracting more than 600,000 views and over 1,000 comments, while triggering a wider debate about workplace culture, work-life balance and the expectations placed on young professionals.
Some social media users criticised her comments, arguing that demanding workloads were simply part of professional life, while others defended her decision to speak openly about what they considered a potentially unhealthy workplace culture.
One of the most popular responses, reportedly liked by more than 16,000 people, warned her: “Girl you’re right, but don’t let your work see this.”
Her employer eventually did.
Four days after posting the original video, Curukovski returned to TikTok and announced that she had lost her job.
“I got fired,” she said.
“I received my termination letter yesterday at around 9am. It was effective immediately.”
She said the termination followed what she described as a “very awkward and confronting” meeting with her employer.
Curukovski claimed she was asked to remove the original video and was warned that her actions could damage her future employment prospects.
“I stood my ground,” she said.
“I was asked to take [the video] down. I was even threatened that I will no longer be employable, further solidifying all the issues I outlined in my initial video.”
She maintained that her comments were directed at the legal profession generally and were not intended as criticism of the particular firm that employed her.
“I haven’t put the firm in disrepute,” she said.
“I didn’t mention names, I didn’t mention client files, I didn’t mention anything. I was merely talking about the experience of junior lawyers.”
Curukovski also insisted that she understood when she uploaded the video that speaking publicly about her employment experience could have consequences.
She said the growing engagement with her social media content had made her increasingly prepared to leave the job.
“I was willing to walk away from that role the second I started getting more engagement here,” she said.
“The future is unknown, but I can’t tell you how excited I am, and how free I feel already.”
Her dismissal further intensified the online debate, with opinions divided between those supporting the employer and those defending the young lawyer.
The controversy has also become part of a broader discussion about generational attitudes towards employment, with some critics suggesting younger workers have unrealistic expectations about the demands of professional careers.
Others have argued that the real issue is corporate workplace culture and that publicly challenging excessive workloads and burnout is necessary to achieve change.
Curukovski rejected suggestions that prioritising work-life balance amounted to laziness.
She said she had no objection to people who voluntarily chose to work extremely long hours but maintained that such a lifestyle was not for her.
“It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, it means you’re protecting yourself from burnout,” she said.
Following her departure from the job, Curukovski said she intends to continue creating social media content and advocating on issues affecting junior lawyers.
She argued that many young lawyers invest substantial amounts of time and money obtaining their qualifications only to become disillusioned with the profession because of its working culture.
“We’ve invested a lot of time and money into our degrees, and it’s actually quite heartbreaking to see people leave the industry because of how cut-throat it is,” she said.
The episode has consequently evolved beyond Curukovski’s individual employment dispute into a wider online argument over the expectations placed on junior lawyers, professional conduct on social media, employer reputational concerns, workplace pressure and whether demanding corporate cultures are compatible with the growing demand among younger professionals for greater work-life balance.
The identity of Curukovski’s former employer was not disclosed in the material, and no response from the firm to her account of the circumstances surrounding her dismissal was provided.
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