About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

From a corporate affairs perspective, ensuring the business maintains its freedom to sell and advertise our products is the most important thing we work on daily. This work involves campaigning for a fair go for spirits, whether that means ensuring the NSW lockout laws enable consumers to drink neat whiskey after midnight, campaigning for lower excise rate comparable with beer and wine, or ensuring our stakeholders understand that Australians are drinking less alcohol now than over the past 50 years but are treating themselves and drinking better quality products.

Strategy setting for the business is also an important job, particularly in the environment I’ve described above – anticipating how our industry responds to changing consumer behaviour and trends, and adopting plans to achieve growth accordingly.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

Building relationships is essential to our in-house roles as our clients are in the same building! It’s essential to understand their roles, their part in executing the company strategy and making it clear how we assist them to do that. We help by making it easier for people to get their jobs done, and by giving opinions on the commercial outcomes of a transaction in the context of the legal environment, not just on the black letter law.

We aren’t doing our job properly unless we are getting up from our desks and moving around to see people, doing site visits around the company and going out in trade to understand the customers’ point of view. I encourage the legal team to put themselves in the shoes of their business partners by accompanying them regularly to understand their issues, how they are building partnerships with their stakeholders, and how we can support them.

What are the most important considerations you have when recruiting new team members?

Technical skills are always a given – I will assume a lawyer has the technical ability to do the job if they can demonstrate the experience through their CV. However, a growth mind set, inherent curiosity for the business, a passion for the law, interest in and understanding of the financial performance of the business and how a lawyer can contribute to that, and cultural fit (to a certain extent), are imperative.

With a remit that encompasses leadership of two distinct areas, how do you effectively manage your time between each different aspects of your role?

Ruthless prioritisation against the strategy of the business is key, and focusing on what’s going to have the biggest commercial impact on the business. Having a constant eye on reputational risk to the business. In legal this is often related to litigation matters, but forms part of the day to day job in corporate affairs.

Squeaky wheels only get so far – being able to say no to something that is a priority for one person but from a corporate point of view is a low priority isn’t an easy skill to acquire when you want to be helpful, but is essential to focusing on the right things.

I have a cracker legal team assisting me throughout Asia Pacific, well regarded within the business and with vast corporate knowledge, which enables me to focus on corporate affairs issues across the region and lean into strategic legal projects or matters when required.

How much influence do you, as a general counsel, have on the diversity and inclusion policies of your organisation?

A lot! Sitting on the two executive teams in Australia and New Zealand and Asia Pacific, this is a regular topic on our agendas as a team. We have a variety of Employee Resource Groups in each market which lead discussions on diversity and inclusion through our people. For example, in Australia we have groups such as GROW (focusing on gender), Pride (LGBTQI) and Young Professionals, and in Asia we have Spirit (focusing on inclusivity of non-drinkers).

As a leader of the business I have a lot of opportunity to coach and mentor other employees and discuss diversity and inclusion one-on-one, as well as to represent the company in other forums to keep this conversation going.

Within my team this has also been a regular topic of conversation, and we have done a lot of work on personality types and learning approaches to ensure we all acknowledge that we operate differently, to ensure an inclusive environment where everyone’s contribution is valued.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

There is always more opportunity for in house teams to embrace technology. We recently adopted a legal tracking system (Xakia) which enables us to not only track matters within the team and understand where they are up to, but also present data to the rest of the business and the executive team to show the value legal contributes to the business, the areas that take most of our focus, and where we could implement systems, checklists and templates for repeat work to empower the business to self serve and let us focus on more strategic matters.

What do you feel is the best way to get more women into in-house legal leadership positions?

So far I haven’t had any difficulty with this in my in-house roles – in my first in-house role for an investment bank I reported to a strong and inspirational female general counsel and there was a majority of female lawyers across the business. At my previous place of employment, my whole legal team was women until quite recently, and currently my Asia Pacific legal team is all women with, again, a majority female skew at global legal team level.

Coaching young lawyers to have the confidence to express their views on areas outside the law or that aren’t strictly black letter law has been key in this. To think beyond “working hard” and to work smarter, always be looking for solutions, to think about their next steps for growth rather than linear progression, and to put themselves out of their comfort zone. Coaching our female lawyers to say yes to opportunities even though they might not feel ready or completely confident. They will always make it work. Helping them to speak up for themselves, and find sponsors within the organisation. It’s also important to have the male leaders in the business embrace and encourage this.