Team size:  50

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure organisational resilience?

Instability and crises open up new opportunities for business growth, but also present challenges to the predictability of legal and regulatory outcomes.  The core focus of a good Legal Team should be to plan legal and regulatory outcomes into the future based on a set of assumptions and frameworks. When these assumptions are challenged by political instability, then planning can be challenging. During these periods, it is even more important to apply conservative “first principles” approaches to legal questions.

A good GC should act like a Risk Manager for the firm’s reputation, brand and legal/regulatory profile, as well as its contractual and other documentation.

Do you have a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you are passionate about?  

ESG.  The Climate is our challenge for the generation and beyond.  From a “risk” perspective, no business can afford to neglect ESG.  It is integral to attracting customers, attracting younger staff and future-proofing the business.  With some exceptions based on swings in national politics, it is also widely accepted as a differentiating KPI for stronger businesses to succeed.  I have rarely seen a time when a personal passion can align so clearly with financial success.

What is the biggest shift you have seen in the role of General Counsel in the past five years, and how do you see it evolving further?

The increasing complexity of a GC role means good GCs have to act like business managers overseeing allocation of budget, resources and tasks.  Artificial Intelligence and ESG are the other two big shifts for the current decade and beyond.

How do you balance being a legal risk manager with being a strategic business enabler, and where do you see the biggest tensions?

Well, the GC is often the most conservative voice in the room.  But a balanced business should maintain GC representation at the Board level to ensure a balanced consideration of risk and reward in all key strategies. Ultimately, there is no reward or growth without risk, but the question is how to find a sustainable balance for the risks involved.

What is the most difficult decision you’ve had to make as a GC, and what lessons did it teach you?

Taking the decision to close certain regional offices based on changes in the political situation and sanctions environment. This is never easy when staff are involved.

In the face of increasing regulation and scrutiny, what are the biggest compliance challenges keeping GCs up at night?

No GC can act alone in keeping abreast of increasing regulations, sanctions and business risks. The challenge is to act as a risk manager in selecting strong service-providers to keep abreast of those risks – and hopefully sleep easy at night.

How do you see AI and automation reshaping the legal profession, and how are you leveraging technology in your own legal team?

To be honest, the efficiency gains in AI are probably still ahead of us and not yet witnessed.  In the legal profession, AI ‘s strongest impact seems to have been in search functions, data-mining and discovery – saving time and costs.  AI doesn’t yet seem to have found its way into generating value for GCs and this is something we can expect over the next few years.

What is one leadership principle or practice that has had the greatest impact on your career as a GC?

Caring about your firm’s risk and reputation should be a deeply personal endeavour. If you don’t feel passionately about this then it is impossible to make hard decisions about Legal Risks for the firm and still ensure that the firm trusts in your judgment.

What is the most overlooked skill or mindset that today’s in-house lawyers need to succeed at the highest level?

Planning ahead.  Managing risk is like a game of chess, trying to think several moves in advance to think about the regulatory and legal risks involved in today’s decisions.

If you could change one thing about how businesses engage with their legal teams, what would it be and why?

Getting involved at the beginning of major strategy decisions rather than at the end.