Team size: Legal & Secretariat (L&S) is comprised of c.350 permanent colleagues.

What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past 12 months?

Over the past year, I’ve led L&S’s involvement in several of LBG’s most strategically significant initiatives, each reinforcing our role as a forward-looking, enabling partner in the Group’s transformation.

We played a central role in shaping the Group’s AI and data governance strategy, including the safe deployment of GenAI tools like Microsoft Copilot across LBG. Legal developed adoption frameworks that preserve legal privilege and manage risk, while enabling innovation at scale – ensuring LBG can embrace emerging technologies with confidence.

We also supported the launch of Lloyds Premier, an innovative new multi-service proposition for customers with over £100,000 in income or investable assets. Legal advised on the product’s terms, customer journey, and documentation, adopting an agile delivery model, demonstrating how we’re flexing our approach to empower the business within clear legal guardrails.

Alongside this, we’ve continued to shape the external environment through regulatory reform, providing strategic input into Financial Ombudsman Service and Consumer Credit Act reform and the Mansion House Accord, advocating for proportionate regulation and better customer outcomes through extensive legal thought leadership.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

As General Counsel of Group Legal during the financial crisis, I led the legal workstream delivering the complex demerger of TSB from Lloyds Banking Group, involving a full structural carve-out to meet state aid divestment obligations, including regulatory authorisations, asset transfers, and operational independence, and post-crisis supported the stabilisation of the Group and return to full private control.

During the COVID-19 crisis, as Chief Legal Officer, I oversaw the legal response enabling the rapid deployment of emergency government policy into actionable, compliant lending frameworks, most notably through the swift rollout of CBILS and BBLS, delivering over £13 billion to help safeguard over 350,000 businesses.

Another major undertaking was leading the retail bank’s ring-fencing programme, involving restructuring over £600 billion in assets, requiring coordinated legal input across corporate, regulatory, tax, and customer communications.

Alongside this, I focused on continuing to build a future-ready, technology-orientated legal and secretariat function, equipped not only to meet immediate challenges but to anticipate and enable long-term transformation, as part of the Group’s wider strategy.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

A modern in-house counsel must be future-ready, combining legal expertise with commercial insight, digital fluency, and strategic influence. The role has evolved from legal advisor to business enabler, requiring a mindset anchored in the “three I’s”: insight, innovation, and influence.

At L&S, we’ve embedded this through our Future Ready transformation, underpinned by technology, people, and process. Today’s in-house counsel must be tech-native – comfortable with legal tech, data, and AI, and able to translate these capabilities into smarter, faster outcomes.

Equally, scaled leadership and cross-functional collaboration are essential. We’ve reimagined our extended leadership model to drive strategy with greater pace and clarity, while embedding innovative ways of working without compromising governance.

It is essential that modern in-house counsel also can look outwards and ahead, anticipate change, shape regulatory strategy and act as a trusted voice in the organisation’s growth and transformation journey.

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to foster a more inclusive work environment?

Diversity and inclusion are central to the L&S function with strong SLT sponsorship and an innovative senior lawyer DE&I lead. Dedicated working groups focus on race and ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ+, disability and neurodiversity, and social mobility, with intersecting initiatives across strands, including partnering with our panel firms and driving change across the legal sector. Further cultural change is supported through circular mentoring, pairing self-nominated colleagues with senior leaders to champion diverse talent and foster an inclusive workplace. Our team also plays a key role in LBG’s social mobility network, with senior legal colleagues serving as co-chair and secretary, and myself as one of two executive allies.

To promote inclusive recruitment and career progression, we introduced a refreshed Inclusive Hiring Charter alongside a recruitment toolkit, e-learning modules, and step-by-step guide for end-to-end hiring. Our Inclusive Hiring Super Team delivered roadshows across L&S, embedding peer learning for hiring managers and provides ongoing vacancy support. We also actively engage with Group-wide talent attraction initiatives to grow a future-ready legal community.