Coming back to civilisation post-production, and then living through the age of COVID-19, Ms Coombes said that being forced to adjust to a “new normal” means that lawyers have become, and will remain, more efficient in their practices.

“We’ll all become a lot more efficient,” she deduced.

“I know that, as a profession, we are efficient anyway in the amount of work that we can get through even with the great challenges that our work presents. But we’re already finding new ways of dealing with [the pandemic] very expeditiously, and I think that will then flow on. So, in fact, we will be better lawyers and the profession will be better as a result of the adversity that we’re facing now.” 

During her time on “Survivor”, Ms Coombes had to learn to communicate in new ways with fellow contestants, and correspondingly, lawyers across the board are having to understand and appreciate how best to engage with clients, colleagues, opposing counsel and the bench via more modern avenues, she mused.

“That’s why we will develop new skills and it will forge new practices for us all going forward. I had my first appearance yesterday via Webex and I did it from home. It was amazing to think that I was in the county court sitting in my kitchen,” she recounted.

“So, there’s a lot of progress that I think will come to our practice from this crisis that we’re all facing now. So, even though we might feel down and uncertain about things, I think that there will be real value in it for us all once we come through the other side.”

Figuring out how best to achieve such efficiency, both now and post-pandemic, can and likely will require a bit of trial and error, Ms Coombes noted, given that every lawyer is an individual and “there’s no prescription or magic words that would apply to everyone”.

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“It’s about looking in yourself and analysing how your response is. You might want to run away from what’s going on or turn your mind to something else, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to face up and face that challenge,” she espoused.

“I do think it’s an individual process, but at the same time, what I did [during ‘Survivor’] and what I learned out there was to be patient with yourself. If you find that you’re beating up on yourself, you’ve just got to put that to one side and say, ‘Why am I feeling this way?’ Try and analyse why it is you’re having that response, and then take action in some way to overcome it.”

Photo credit: Network 10

To listen to the full conversation with Sharn Coombes, click below:

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