Editing Harold Holt (section)

===Legal career===
Holt served his [[articled clerk|articles of clerkship]] with the firm of [[Theodore Fink|Fink]], [[Robert Best (Australian politician)|Best]] & Miller. He was admitted to the [[Victorian Bar]] in late 1932, and opened his own legal practice the following year. However, clients during the [[Great Depression|Depression]] were scarce and frequently underpaid, so Holt lived in a boardinghouse and often relied upon the hospitality of friends.<ref name=frame6/> Drawing on his family connections in show business, he eventually accepted an offer to become secretary of the Victorian Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association, a film industry lobby group. In this capacity he appeared several times before the [[Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration]].<ref name = ADB>[http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/holt-harold-edward-10530 Australian Dictionary of Biography]. 1996</ref><ref name="frame9">Frame (2005), p. 9.</ref> This had a positive effect on his own practice, and he eventually took on two partners, first Jack Graham and later James Newman.<ref>Frame (2005), p. 13.</ref> The firm of Holt, Graham, & Newman was dissolved in 1963, following a financial dispute and subsequently reconstituted as Holt, Newman, & Holt, with Holt's son Sam as the new addition. Holt's involvement in the practice declined once he entered politics and ceased altogether in 1949, although he did not formally retire until assuming the prime ministership.<ref>Frame (2005), p. 306.</ref>