About

Despite qualifying at a top-tier Australian-based law firm, David Simmonds explains that he ‘always had the mind set for going in-house’, a path that began upon his receiving dual law and commerce honours from university. This, along with his ambition and the technical knowledge gained from a private practice career as an M&A specialist, provided him with the ideal tools to succeed in-house when the opportunity presented itself. His first corporate counsel role occurred in 1999 with telecoms giant Telstra, around the end of the dot com boom, which Simmonds recalls as a ‘very interesting time [during which] the technology and industry was changing rapidly’, which led to business ‘evolution in almost every respect’. After impressing at Telstra, becoming general counsel of their wholesale and infrastructure business units, Simmonds was headhunted by CLP’s Australian subsidiary, Energy Australia, to become their general counsel and company secretary. In a particularly busy period for the integrated energy company, Simmonds was given an excellent opportunity to display his considerable talents to the top management at CLP, and within a year he had been offered the job of director of group legal, moving to the electricity supplier’s Hong Kong headquarters. When explaining how he managed these achievements in such a short time-frame, Simmonds believes that it was partly being in the right place at the right time combined with commercial skills that enabled him to contribute ‘beyond a technical legal role’. Considering one potential deal he was involved in, Simmonds explains: ‘I had reservations about the deal and gave forthright advice on the risks involved with it… this led to the decision being made that it wasn’t pursued, with the opinion ultimately being that this saved the company a lot of money’. An excellent example of corporate counsel successfully fulfilling their risk management role via business acumen, Simmonds acknowledges that speaking out ‘was a risky strategy’, but one that ultimately paid off. Once installed as group general counsel at CLP, Simmonds refreshed the legal team and aligned it closely with the business by creating separate general counsel roles for the company’s regional operations and establishing a specialised transactional team to support group businesses as required. Apart from ‘very good technical skills’, that are expected rather than prized, Simmonds believes that the very best in-house counsel should possess a ‘solutions-oriented approach to the advice they provide’, getting to know their business from top to bottom. ‘One of the biggest contributions you can make as an in-house lawyer’, Simmonds sums up, ‘is to bring the perspective that comes from involvement with various parts of the company and external advisors that we deal with and communicate this to senior management’.