For Ms Vidgen, who professes that she “never really left the law in a funny sort of way”, despite moving into the world of investment banking from Mallesons at just 25 years of age, said she is “really lucky” that her legal background is something she has used the whole way through and is transferable to other facets of work.

She admitted she was “very fortunate” to be doing a lot of energy and resources work as a lawyer, which she enjoyed, but thought that she wanted “a bit more latitude”.

When posed the question of whether there is a need for more lawyers in roles that aren’t law focused, Ms Vidgen exclaimed that she thinks “people tend to pigeon-hole lawyers and they’ve just got to be a bit braver about going out and doing other things”.

Offering up her own experience, the Macquarie Group global head noted that when she initially made the career switch, she was doing a lot of work at governments which meant undertaking “a lot of PPP type work”.

“There was a lot of analysis of risks and then actually making sure you document those risks properly,” she continued.

The capability, and almost “learned skill” of being able to read a really complex document and extract things from it and make sure you’ve got it right, is another area where Ms Vidgen gave credit to her legal education, while it’s also “incredibly helpful” for compiling complex security documents and making sure legal teams understand what companies are trying to achieve from commercial deals when creating the paperwork.

“So many deals I've seen go wrong,” she went on.

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“They are fine for a long time and then when people look back at the documents, they don’t actually reflect what people think the commercial deal is.”

“So that interface is incredibly important and being able to do that is really important,” she said.

Asset assessment is another area where “a good grasp” on law is invaluable for Ms Vidgen.

She said understanding the commercial and legal frameworks surrounding assets and making sure that appropriate legal due diligence is done on anything that you buy is really important and “it's hard to actually even scope that unless you actually have a good legal background”.

Her legal background has also proved important in her governance work as her career has evolved, the former lawyer offered, but to highlight her point, she gave the example of an acquaintance of hers who had been a general counsel and had been offered a role as CEO in the same company.

“And they thought ‘I can’t do that’ and [despite it being] only a temporary role, they ended up staying for five or six years because they were really, really good at what they did.”

Ms Vidgen noted that she still spends a lot of time with the legal community, through hiring of lawyers to do due diligence on assets she is looking at, among other tasks.

But, “even simple things like actually thinking about the legal and commercial interface with things like intellectual property”, Ms Vidgen considered legal training as providing “a much better base to actually think about that”.

And one last thing non-lawyers have difficulty with?

“Explain[ing] concepts well,” the non-executive director offered.

“Because complex ideas or proposals or even commercial issues, need to be explained really simply – and I think as a lawyer you get trained to do that, and that’s a really powerful thing.”

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