About

Team size: 17

Major legal advisers: Ashurst, Osborne Clarke

James Field joined defence technology company QinetiQ just over 15 years ago, rising steadily through the ranks before taking on the director legal services role in 2018, leading legal and intellectual property. And, following a tough period post-global financial crisis, the company has set its sights on growth, including generating at least 50% of its business from jurisdictions outside the UK.

As such the firm has been in acquisition mode – most notably completing a $120m deal for US company MTEQ, effectively doubling its size there – while also securing renegotiated terms on a 25-year partnering agreement with the Ministry of Defence, worth £1.3bn until 2028.

But the company’s extended leadership committee, on which Field sits, has also set more than ten corporate initiatives to improve the company’s culture and operations. Field is leading on a company-wide wellbeing initiative to improve physical and mental health. ‘The ambition to revolutionalise the company is huge,’ Field comments. ‘Managing the team through all the change that brings is intensive.’

It has also forced Field to look at how his legal team needs to evolve to fit this new global model, with everyone based in the UK. That may involve expanding headcount into the US, Europe and Australia over the coming years, but in the meantime, he has set four key areas to improve how his team works and delivers legal services. Those are improving global alignment and increasing team profile within the company; developing clear career frameworks and team development plans; rationalising external patent attorney usage; and maximising the value from its external legal panel, through solutions such as reverse secondments, drawing on credit banks and leveraging technology solutions.

An early manifestation of this has been the introduction of the company’s first two in-house legal training contracts. The company has on a rolling basis taken 12 graduates into its in-house team over the last seven years and worked closely with panel firm Osborne Clarke to offer the law firm’s incoming trainees the opportunity to gain experience at QinetiQ first. That has now evolved into training contracts, which began this January and was led by QinetiQ head of intellectual property legal services, Claire Wilson. Field envisages the potential of introducing an apprentice scheme in future years but says developing quality training contracts is the focus at this point.

‘We’re at the point where we have a stable foundation for the team and we see lots of benefits for the business and team in running the training contracts we have just kicked off with Osborne Clarke,’ Field says. ‘The nice thing is that across the team we’ve seen the appetite to get involved and there are opportunities for almost everyone to do some work supervision, mentoring and coaching.’

He adds: ‘It’s also a great way of building some career progression and natural succession planning into our team.’