About

By far a high point in Paul Kirkby’s in-house legal career to date was his role in the closure of Kuwait’s first independent water and power project. ‘I was solely responsible for the project documentation against two sets of magic circle law firms acting for the lenders and an American firm acting for the Government’, he explains. ‘The law changed three times during the development of the project and we had to come up with innovative solutions to new problems to keep the deal on track. It was a long and painful process but in the end it all worked out’. His achievement was particularly impressive in light of his team’s uniquely holistic approach to deal-making. Holding a dual-role in its truest sense, Paul Kirkby handles multi-jurisdictional billion-dollar transactions from their early beginnings to final conclusion, running legal and commercial negotiations simultaneously. ‘It’s business advisor role – the reality is you have to do everything all of the time’, Kirkby says. ‘There’s no real division between commercial and legal; it’s very different to being in private practice. We have external counsel but ultimately the buck stops with us’. A former DLA Piper UK LLP senior associate, Kirkby has taken significant steps to optimise efficiency in the function since his arrival, and also build closer ties with GDF’s commercial teams. Even with the legal function’s integrated approach, gaining the trust of the business can still be difficult, Kirkby explains. ‘It takes time to build respect with your commercial colleagues so that you are seen as a help rather than a hindrance’.