About

The Asia legal team at Arcadis is comprised of eight lawyers and one non-lawyer in Hong Kong, and four lawyers and legal staff in the company’s global excellence centre in Manila, which serves the whole of the Arcadis global business. General counsel Carl Watson, is the executive owner for legal, compliance and risk assurance in the Asia region and is a member of the regional executive leadership team reporting to the regional CEO and to the global general counsel and corporate secretary. He led the implementation of a new key global strategic blueprint for the “future of legal services” within Arcadis, as he explains: ‘The blueprint is aligned to our global operating model which we call “the Arcadis Way” and creates a menu of legal services available to the business at each component stage of that model. The aim is to drive legal solutions that are bespoke, agile and digitally-enabled’. Another important change is the approach to resourcing legal solutions. In order to ensure that costs are controlled, Watson has assembled an innovative blend of employed and retained external legal resources. This allows him to manage and prioritise the legal support deployed on the matters the team handles. He sees, ‘more innovation in resourcing the team in future with greater use of our Global Excellence Centres to provide more cost-effective “commoditised” legal services freeing up other team members to get even closer to the businesses they support’. The team does not have a heavy claims or cases record in Asia as it focuses on resolving disputes before they escalate to formal claims. However, it recently settled a significant arbitration with a positive outcome for all sides. A core priority for the team has been supporting the business to close out a number of high revenue appointment agreements with several multinational clients across the region. The group sees China as a strong growth area and so it is a core transactional focus area. Watson describes his team as, ‘a small but fit-for-purpose team of hand-selected, passionate and motivated solution finders who always go the extra mile to drive best outcomes for our business stakeholders’. Being small, Watson says the team must ‘punch above its weight’ by always delivering on deadlines and seeking to learn lessons, staying close to the business to refine products. The team is looking at ways to enhance its service and efficiency through digitally-enabled solutions both in terms of the governance internally and eliminating paper forms; to resourcing in more innovative and electronic platforms/systems through due diligence, records, claims management, governance/approvals, and more.