Erika Parry

7.00 AM

Since starting a full-time role, I have tried to become the sort of person who gets up early and goes to the gym. Unfortunately, today isn’t one of those days, so my alarm goes off at around 7.00 am and I snooze it a few times before getting out of bed at 7.15 am.

7.20 AM

I make my first (of many) coffees for the day and drink that as I get myself ready for work. This can take anywhere from 20 to 40mins and usually ends up in a mad dash for the 8.00 am light rail.

8.40 AM

The Sydney office is right next to the light rail so it’s a quick walk into the office. My first stop is the kitchen to put my lunch in the fridge, grab my second coffee of the day and fill up my water bottle. I head to my desk where I change into my heels and catch up with a few of my colleagues. Since we introduced a hybrid working model, I don’t see my colleagues in the office every day, so when I do, it’s nice to have a quick chat.

9.00 AM

Time to start my workday. Although it’s cliché, there truly is no ‘typical’ day at FTI Consulting – some days I will be in and out of meetings and jumping from matter to matter, and other days I could be working on a single report or analysis for the whole day.

The first thing I do is complete my timesheet for the previous day. I like to write my timesheets on sticky notes and do them at least once a day to keep track of the different activities I perform for a few matters. I also use this time to reply to any emails that have come through for the morning.

9.30 AM

By 9.30 am, my coach (mentor) usually wants to grab a coffee, so we head downstairs to our favourite coffee shop. I get a coffee with my coach almost every day and during this time we talk about anything from client work to upcoming business development opportunities or even personal things. We’re both big bachelor/bachelorette fans, so today we talked about the most recent bachelorette episode.

9.45 AM

The first matter I’m working on today is a corporate dispute where we have been engaged to assess a company’s finance policies and practices against Australian accounting standards, as part of a shareholder class action. Our role is as a consulting expert, so we won’t be issuing an independent expert report like some of our other matters, though we will be presenting our findings to the Board of Directors of this listed company. Today we’re discussing our progress and analysis with our Senior Managing Director (which is the equivalent of Partner in other firms) in charge of this matter and consider other areas of analysis. I quickly finish off some analysis and provide an update to the matter manager.

11.00 AM

We head into a conference room to set up the call with the matter Senior Managing Director, who is based in Melbourne. The Forensic and Litigation Consulting team is located in Sydney and Melbourne, so often engagements can involve both states. We present our initial findings and the draft deliverable structure to the Senior Managing Director. She asks lots of insightful questions and provides suggestions on how she thinks the template could be set out to be easier to understand from the lawyer’s or end-client’s perspective. Throughout the meeting I take notes to send to my team after.

12.30 PM

After sending through the notes from the meeting and having a quick debrief with the matter manager about next steps, I head to lunch. I brought lunch today, but I received a message from another colleague saying she wanted to buy lunch, so I join her for a walk to the food court. We head back upstairs to eat in the kitchen with a few colleagues from other teams (I mean how can you say no to that view!).

1.30 PM

During lunch, I receive an email from a Senior Managing Director on another engagement letting me know we received approval from the client to proceed with additional investigation and preparation of a report, so I head back to my desk to work on that for the rest of the afternoon. One of the great things about consulting is that every engagement and engagement team is often different. While the matter I was working on this morning was with three others, this matter is primarily just myself and the Senior Managing Director.

This engagement is a confidential investigation into suspected fraudulent employee expense claims. Although I had already completed an analysis earlier this month using the bank statements and expense claim documentation, the client is wanting to get a better understanding of how the fraud occurred. Working with our forensic technology team, we obtain email data from the two suspects and uploaded all the data to Relativity. Relativity is an eDiscovery platform used to host and interrogate information. Using this software, I conduct targeted searches on all the documents to recreate the chain of correspondence between the two suspects for each expense claim. In particular, the client wanted to know who originally created the spreadsheets that were submitted in the expense claim – using this software we can review the metadata on the excel file to see which user originally created it and when.

I give the Senior Managing Director a quick call (as he was working from home today) to update him on my findings and confirm that he’s happy for me to start drafting up a report. I draft the skeleton of the report and ask one of my colleagues with more investigation experience for help where I get stuck. Despite the engagement team being just myself and the Senior Managing Director, everyone in my team is always happy to help and provide me opportunities to gain experience.

6.00 PM

As the two matters I was working on today are not super urgent and I don’t have any business development or networking events tonight, I head home via the light rail.

6.45 PM

Once I’m home, I quickly get changed and head off to my yoga studio. Depending on deadlines and generally how busy I am, I try to go to four or five classes a week.

8.00 PM

After a quick stop at Woollies to pick up any missing ingredients, I head home to make dinner. My housemate and I take turns cooking and tonight’s menu is Japanese curry.

9.00 PM

While I was in Shavasana (the final resting pose in yoga), I thought of another avenue of investigation for the matter I was working on this afternoon. I always take my laptop home with me in case I have to work from home the next day, so I do a little bit more research and report writing before bed. I don’t often work this late, but sometimes there may be an urgent matter in our line of work. I do get recognition for the hard work I put in, which is nice.

10.30 PM

Time for shower and bed. After my very in-depth skincare routine, I settle down to go to sleep. I aim to go to sleep before 11.30 but after falling down the rabbit hole that is TikTok, I very rarely fall asleep before midnight. Also, tonight I’ve packed my gym gear in anticipation of going to the gym tomorrow morning!

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of FTI Consulting, Inc., its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. FTI Consulting, Inc., including its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a consulting firm and is not a certified public accounting firm or a law firm. FTI Consulting is an independent global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organisations manage change, mitigate risk and resolve disputes: financial, legal, operational, political & regulatory, reputational and transactional. FTI Consulting professionals, located in all major business centers throughout the world, work closely with clients to anticipate, illuminate and overcome complex business challenges and opportunities. Some services may be provided through FTI Capital Advisors (Australia) Pty Ltd AFSL # 504204. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation
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