Natali Curukovski #

Introduction #

Natali Curukovski is a Melbourne-based junior lawyer who was fired from her first legal job three weeks into it in August 2026, according to her account and Australian press reports of it, after a candid TikTok about the realities of junior-lawyer life went viral and made its way back to her employer. The 26-year-old law graduate recorded the video in her third week of practice, describing the profession she had spent seven years preparing for as “soul-sucking,” and the clip drew more than 500,000 views — later climbing past 600,000 — while igniting a sharp online argument about generational expectations and long hours. Days later, she told followers she had been fired after refusing to take the video down, in a follow-up TikTok that outstripped even the original in views.

Background Information #

Curukovski, 26 and based in Melbourne, took a long road into the profession: before practising law she completed a seven-year degree and spent years working as a paralegal before being officially admitted to the Australian legal profession. Her first role as a lawyer was at a Melbourne firm. She told followers she felt misled by the legal profession after seven years of intense study and training.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

Allegations. The account that she was fired for the video comes from Curukovski’s own follow-up TikToks and Australian press reports of them; her former employer never published its reasoning and nothing here has been tested in court. The firm was not named in her videos.

The video went up in August 2026. “It’s my third week practising as a lawyer in Melbourne and I knew this was coming, and I knew I’d feel this way, but I’m really just not loving it,” she said in the original clip. She described “constant deadlines, the pressure, the working after hours, doing all these CPD events, reading extra books,” and questioned why it felt like she had “did seven years of all of this to just go back and do the same thing.” Being a lawyer, she said, “isn’t really supportive of a lifestyle,” and she was hardly able to take a lunch break; despite entering law school with the idealistic ambition to “make a difference to people’s lives,” she had found the job was about “making profits for that business, and if you don’t produce profits, you’re not of value to the team.” “So it becomes less about helping people and more about making businesses richer and restricting your own time and freedom for a paycheck,” she added, before summing up the experience as “sucking my soul out.”

The clip, which does not name her firm or any clients, kept climbing in views — and, she says, reached her employer. Lawyers Weekly reported that she was fired one week after the TikTok went viral, after refusing to take it down. In a follow-up video that outstripped the original, Curukovski told followers she had been “fired” because she “posted a TikTok that got a lot of traction about the experience of junior lawyers.” She described an “awkward” and “confronting” conversation in which her employer allegedly asked her to take the video down; she says she refused, “stood [her] ground,” and received an “effective immediately” termination letter — “I received my termination letter yesterday at around 9am.” She maintains she was “merely talking about the experience of junior lawyers” and says she knew the clip could “come back around” to the firm — which, in her words, it “well and truly did.”

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Opinion split almost immediately. Harsh commenters lined up to tell her this was simply what adulthood looks like: “Welcome to becoming an adult,” one wrote, while another offered “Welcome to life. You start at the bottom” and a third shouted in all caps: “IT’S CALLED HARD WORK! YOU CAN’T GET INSTANT GRATIFICATION OVER EVERYTHING THESE DAYS!” Younger viewers — particularly other Gen Z professionals tired of being told that exhaustion is a rite of passage — backed her, with one supporter praising her as “very brave to advocate for yourself” and adding, “Your wellbeing should not be compromised for a paycheck that’s not real success, it’s performance success.” On Mamamia’s count the video drew more than 1,000 comments, and more than 16,000 people liked one that read: “girl you’re right, but don’t let your work see this.” Her work did see it, and the sacking became the story: coverage framed the episode as the latest flashpoint in an increasingly bitter debate about Gen Z and work, in which younger employees are routinely accused of “not wanting to work” and of being too focused on mental health and fair pay.

Her former employer, for its part, reportedly contested aspects of her story. While declining to comment directly on her case, the firm said in a statement reported by news.com.au and quoted by IBTimes UK that it was “very proud” of its “workplace culture and mentoring program with regards to all lawyers, and specifically junior lawyers,” that all staff are contracted to work from 9am to 5pm with a fully paid one-hour lunch break, that any longer hours or shorter breaks are “of their choosing and is not an obligation,” and that it “actively discourages staff from working beyond 5pm because we do not believe that it is healthy or necessary.”

Current Status #

As of the latest reporting, Curukovski was out of the job, and the public record consisted of her account and the firm’s general response. Nothing in her account of the firing has been independently verified; as IBTimes UK put it, “there is, at this stage, only her version and the firm’s general response.” No lawsuit or other legal claim arising from the termination had been reported, and the firm’s comment was limited to a general defence of its workplace culture.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The episode ended Curukovski’s first legal job three weeks into a profession she had already concluded was, in her words, “soul-sucking.” It also handed her a platform: a junior lawyer’s two-minute complaint became a national talking point about burnout and whether young professionals should speak publicly about their jobs, and her firing announcement became her most-viewed clip. For the legal industry, the case added to ongoing scrutiny of the profession’s traditional work practices, with IBTimes UK observing that the video exposed “just how wide the gap has become between what firms think they are offering and what a new generation believes it is signing up for.”