About

‘The role of the general counsel as a business leader is vastly underrated’, opines Rachel Besley. Heading a 20-strong team, she has supported Deloitte’s Australian operations through a period of escalated growth. ‘The biggest challenge is a day-to-day one’, she says. ‘How do we stay true to our incredible down-to-earth culture and maintain our sound yet prudent commercial approach to risk and legal matters, whilst growing at the pace we have experienced over recent years? We have managed this well to date, but it is a constant challenge and one that will not go away as we approach number one in our market’. Throughout her four years as Deloitte’s Australia GC, Besley has gained continual recognition for her contribution to the wider business. She was singled out for a program of high-achieving women to work on a new firm-wide approach to mentoring in 2010. She also drew notice for her drastic overhaul of the national legal function, in what she terms a ‘customer-centric re-engineering’. The project released tangible results, and the function has since been formally recognised for its performance. When it comes to outside counsel, Besley would like to see firms move beyond immediate advice to anticipating legal and industry trends on their clients’ behalf.