About

Lauren Ellison and Marcus Crachi, both supervising counsel, lead the legal team of seven lawyers and four non-lawyers at Telstra Enterprise in Hong Kong and report to Justine Rowe, general counsel, based in Melbourne. The broader team supporting Telstra’s work in Asia also includes eight additional lawyers based in Singapore and Australia, one of whom is currently on commercial secondment with the business. In 2017, Telstra updated its legal services strategy to align the legal department more closely with the business operations and underscore the vital role that it partakes as valued business partners. It has implemented many innovative practises in the delivery of its legal services such as seven self-service tools, five triage tools, and the award-winning Telstra Legal Innovation Forum (LIF). Ellison explains that ‘LIF is in its second year and involves Hong Kong lawyers working in small teams in separate work streams to use agile methodology and design, thinking to address group-wide challenges changing the way that we work – these include: automation, triage, data and metrics and knowledge management in which our team members have been instrumental’. An example of the team’s triage software is called “ThinkSmart”, used to prioritise requests to the legal department providing those requests that do not need the attention of the department with self-help materials, precedent documents, and directories to a more appropriate team within the business. Additionally, the team uses NDA software and Novation agreement tools in order to provide these agreements to the business without involvement from the legal team. These innovations filter out time-consuming, low priority tasks which do not need the attention of the legal team. The legal team is committed to using artificial intelligence technology and other innovative methods to reduce the need for legal project management, prioritise its work, and automate the more routine matters. It is leading the way in this emerging legal technology in the industry. Some of the team’s recent work has included advice on the execution of strategic infrastructure investments in subsea cable investments between Hong Kong and the Unites States, and between Singapore and Australia; legal supervision of the launch of strategic products globally including the expansion of Telstra’s SDWAN portfolio and the launch of the Telstra Programmable Network (TPN); advising on a number of complex FDI applications; and advising on complex transactions involving China including the implementation of the new Cybersecurity Law. Ellison describes the team as, ‘an accessible, collaborative, innovative, agile customer-focused and diverse legal team that supports each other and partners with the business to help it deliver on its strategic priorities internationally’. The team’s members come from several different countries and cultures, with various levels of experience working across jurisdictions and industries.