Barrister thrives on ‘intellectual challenge’
Dunedinbased barrister Taryn Gudmanz took over last year as the New Zealand Law Society’s South Island vicepresident when Frazer Barton, also of Dunedin, was elected national president. She talks to business editor about life in the law.
SHE calls herself a converted Dunedinite. When South Africanborn Taryn Gudmanz arrived in the city in 2007, she told her husband she would ‘‘give it a go’’ for a couple of years. She has been here ever since.
A senior barrister who specialises in commercial and civil litigation, Ms Gudmanz emigrated to New Zealand when she was 17. Her parents were seeking a better life for themselves and their children, and the family settled in Christchurch.
On reflection, she found it fascinating noone suggested law to her as a potential career, despite being top in English, a dux scholar, editor of the school newspaper and president of the debating society.
On that basis, it seemed law would be a good option but there might have been more barriers to being a lawyer in South Africa, certainly as a woman, she said.
Initially, she enrolled at Canterbury University for a commerce degree, figuring it was a good foray into the world of business. In her first year, a lawslanted paper piqued her interest and it was what she described as that serendipity that led her to the law.
She graduated with a law degree with first class honours and a commerce degree and that accounting background had proven very valuable in her subsequent career, given there was so much accounting and maths involved in law, she said.
Ms Gudmanz began her career in 2002 in the Bell Gully litigation team in Wellington, where she gained experience in a wide range of complex commercial matters covering a range of industries, including pharmaceuticals, insurance, electricity, media and venture capital. She also had a secondment to Pharmac as legal counsel.
In 2005, she moved to London, where she joined the professional liability and commercial litigation department at Barlow Lyde & Gilbert (now Clyde & Co) and was admitted as a solicitor in 2006.
She acted for insurers in the London market advising on coverage issues and on negligence claims against solicitors, accountants, company directors and trustees. The value of claims was as high was $US100 million.
Experiences included going to Lloyd’s of London and to the Privy Council where she was not arguing, but acting for the insurers — ‘‘I literally fetched the coffee for the QC’’ — and she got to hail a black cab and say ‘‘Downing St, please’’.
While in Wellington, she had met her now husband Regan, a Dunedin boy who had already done his OE and returned to Victoria University to study architecture.
He ‘‘commuted’’ sometimes to London to see her and visited when he finished his degree. He was keen to return to Dunedin to start his architecture career.
Coincidentally, East London, the city Ms Gudmanz grew up in on the East Coast of South Africa, was about the same size as Dunedin but it had ‘‘less going on’’.
Arriving in Dunedin, she joined the litigation team at Gallaway Cook Allan, later moving to Anderson Lloyd in 2012, where she did some major earthquake litigation.
She was a finalist in the Rising Star — Litigation category in the 2014 Euromoney Legal Media Group Australasia Women in Business Awards. She went to the independent bar as a barrister in 2016.
Asked what she enjoyed about law, Ms Gudmanz said there was the intellectual challenge, it was interesting work and there was also the people aspect.
Essentially, the role of a lawyer was to help people solve problems, no matter what aspect of the law was involved. It might be more visible as a litigator when a dispute was involved, but it was the same setting up and dealing with estates, or setting up a business. There were common issues, it was just approached from a different angle.
Working with people required an understanding of how to deal with them and also making them understand what you were trying to tell them. As a litigator, it was not always what they wanted to do.
It could be challenging to run civil litigation for people in a place like Dunedin, where clients were not necessarily big companies. Litigation was very expensive and there were instances of people with an important issue but they could not afford to litigate.
A proposal to increase the Disputes Tribunal jurisdiction would hopefully promote access to justice and that was something that was important, she said.
Her involvement with the Law Society began when she was convener of the Otago Women’s Law Society in 2010 and, through that, had a seat on the law society’s Otago branch council.
She is also the OtagoSouthland representative on the New Zealand Bar Association.
It was a tough job to represent the profession, which was very diverse in the various forms of law practised. But the one thing they had in common was the law.
Being involved with the profession outside of her daytoday practice ensured ‘‘seeing something bigger’’ than her and having to think about issues bigger than her, like access to justice.
It was easy to keep your head down and concentrate on the issues before you — ‘‘we can tend to become quite siloed’’ — and she could go through her career dealing only with other civil litigators, and not being involved in a broad range of issues.
The Otago branch council recognised that the requirements of lawyers in smaller centres were not necessarily the same as those in Dunedin and that was why it had seats for Oamaru, Central Otago and Queenstown representatives.
And through that wider involvement, she also got to meet people in such niche specialties as maritime law — ‘‘they get to do things like arrest ships’’.
Ms Gudmanz was also an accredited mediator. While her legal practice was busy, she enjoyed mediation when she did get to do it. It was fulfilling to help people find a solution they were comfortable with and to help them look at a problem differently.
Training was interesting; it involved learning to think differently.
‘‘The lawyer in you wants to solve the problem. As mediator, you’re not allowed to suggest a solution, you have to help the people to find solutions themselves. That’s quite a mindset shift.’’
Her job involved dealing with a lot of emotion, even when it was straight commercial litigation, and law was an inherently stressful profession, she said.
‘‘People are putting so much trust in you. They are trusting you at some of the most vulnerable times of their lives. Even if they’re setting up a business, it’s still a vulnerable time. Sometimes they expect you to have a magic wand . . . and we don’t have a magic wand.’’
Destressing, she acknowledged, was something she was trying to be better at, and taking time out for herself. The good thing about being a barrister was that she had a little more control over her day — ‘‘not always’’ — but there were occasions if she was working from home that she could go for a lunchtime swim.
A mother of two young children, aged six and eight, Ms Gudmanz tried to be definite with her boundaries, particularly her working hours or when she was on leave, and clients had been very respectful of that.
The family had a property at St Bathans — where the resident wild pig population was the talk of the town — and that provided them with an opportunity to go exploring in the hills with their Land Rover, or just relax.
Her law society work took ‘‘a fair bit of time’’ — probably about at least a day a week — between board meetings, the ‘‘always rather large’’ board papers, sitting on subcommittees and also attending council meetings.
Having Frazer Barton, a colleague when she worked at Anderson Lloyd, as president was great and they had been able to have board meetings in Dunedin.
Diversity was important to both Mr Barton and Ms Gudmanz; having a representative in the profession so people could see themselves in the profession and know it was a possibility for them.
More than 50% who entered the profession were women, but they were not represented at the upper level of the profession.
‘‘It would be great if we could reach the point we stopped getting excited about women doing things,’’ she said.
That was not just about the law — all professions were facing similar issues — and it was not just about gender or ethnicity, but also about having diversity of backgrounds, including disabilities.
‘‘We need people who understand what life is like for their clients.’’
Ms Gudmanz has been appointed to the legal assistance panel for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care and that was an ‘‘absolute privilege’’, albeit a role that involved hearing ‘‘heartwrenching’’ stories.
She also acted as counsel to assist the coroner on inquests, which was another fulfilling area of work, again during an incredibly stressful time for families.
It was rewarding to be able to help families and friends understand what happened and know that everything had been done to prevent another death in similar circumstances.
Ms Gudmanz’s parents moved to Dunedin after the Canterbury earthquakes and they enjoyed a close relationship with their grandchildren. She had extended family in South Africa and her last trip back was in 2016.
Returning to her country of birth, there was ‘‘always that feeling of home’’, and she would love to take her children to let them experience a safari ‘‘and just the feeling of what it’s like there’’.
‘‘I love the Maori concept of tu¯ rangawaewae, that speaks to me,’’ she said.