Team size: 16 (spread across Legal and Compliance) 

In an increasingly complex global environment, how are you helping your organisation navigate risk while still supporting growth?

For me the key attribute is providing succinct commercial advice to the business that identifies the risk aspects of whatever is being proposed. No one likes an in-house lawyer who says no, our job is to support the business to do what it wants to do in a way that manages any risks – you can never extinguish all risk.

How has the role of General Counsel evolved in recent years, and where do you see GCs creating the most value today?

GCs have become much more of a business partner. Previously, they occupied a position slightly removed from the business team so that the GC could give their advice and say they have done their job. In an industry like ours were legal and other risks are everywhere, I need to be in the room to support the business on what they want to do, and take ownership with the business for those decisions.

How has AI changed the legal function recently (including in the past year), and how are you approaching it within your team?

We have an AI first mentality throughout our firm given our tech focus, and the legal and compliance team is no different. We are building our own agents using Claude to do contract review, contract management, regulatory monitoring, compliance workflows, as well as starting to build for larger tasks like market surveillance. The intention is to amplify the skill set of the team that we already have. 

What has been your most significant challenge as General Counsel in recent years, and what did you learn from it?

Dealing with the US matters that impacted our business over the years, in particular standing in an NY court to plead guilty on behalf of the firm to a criminal charge, returning 6 months later to argue at sentencing, and finally then obtaining the first and only United States Presidential pardon for a corporate entity in United States history – the day before we had to pay a USD$100m. fine, thus negating the fine. I learned a lot more perspective in my job dealing with this, including that what really matters is the team around you, supportive shareholders and that so much of the smaller stuff that used to occupy my time didn’t always need my full attention.