Our third annual GC Power List report looks more like a state-of-the profession piece than its two predecessors. While the earlier reports focused on standout individuals, in 2015 we highlight 50 exceptional in-house teams, which inevitably addresses how clients operate.
Even a cursory glance at how these teams have evolved underlines the huge shift that has been taking place in the UK legal profession over the last 15 years: the best in-house legal teams are seizing influence, technical skills and budget, largely from their service providers.
This is particularly notable when it comes to managing their people. High-flying GCs are obsessive about talent and retention. This is largely why they strive to retain interesting work in-house: cost-saving is merely a justification, the primary reason is to motivate and develop their talent with engaging work.
Likewise, expanding in-house teams are using their scale to build formidable industry know-how. A common theme from our research is that law firms are failing to keep up with advances in sector insight at clients.
Even discounting some of the overblown claims about the savviness of GCs as buyers it is clear that bluechips in the UK have become materially more sophisticated purchasers of legal services since the banking crisis.
Successful in-house teams also usually display two related organisational characteristics: firstly an ability to step outside the day-to-day grind to deploy some measure of medium-term thinking and, secondly, develop a co-ordinated approach to building strong links with the business. Failing on these counts is a pretty reliable marker of the teams that struggle.
Those are the common experiences across in-house but huge differences remain between industries (the revenue-per-lawyer range in-house remains startlingly wide even between many comparable businesses). Beyond that it is increasingly obvious that there are two very different dynamics for the in-house profession. GCs working in heavily regulated and contentious sectors have built up vast legal teams interconnected with compliance functions in recent years. Those in less regulated sectors like retail and real estate have maintained surprisingly lean operations. In future, strategic thinking and operational support for in-house may have to more clearly recognise these very different models.
These observations lead to several conclusions. Firstly, these shifts represent an existential challenge to law firms as in-house counsel press their service providers into narrower roles. It’s not clear that law firms have grappled with the troubling implications of this for their business models. And, if we are currently witnessing the glory days for corporate legal teams, as ITV’s Andrew Garard convincingly asserts, then the UK profession is arguably overtaking its US equivalents in terms of sophistication. If true, those are two highly significant trends for the global legal market that will be playing out for years to come.
alex.novarese@legalease.co.uk
In the three years we at RPC have been involved with Legal Business’ GC Power List, the shifting sands of the economy have created both threat and opportunity across all sectors, in all jurisdictions; the rise and rise of the regulator has continued unabated; and the issue of enterprise-level risk has established itself firmly at the top of the corporate agenda.
Frightening? Actually, I take that back, it’s exhilarating. We live in interesting times. Interesting times bring interesting challenges. And interesting challenges give the very best people the opportunity to put down a marker and establish themselves as true leaders within their organisations.
And, as this stellar list of the 50 best in-house legal teams in the country shows, the most progressive lawyers are making up a growing number of those leaders. Not just as leaders of their teams but, increasingly, as genuine leaders of their organisations, influencing strategic direction and with a significant voice at the boardroom table.
Jonathan Watmough
Managing Partner
The Legal 500 returned to Tokyo for a timely and extremely informative roundtable discussion alongside Jones Day on the future impact of carbon markets on the drive towards net zero in Asia and Japan. Tokyo-based Jones Day lawyers Ming-Yee Lin and Lukas Kratochvil were joined by the specialists who had flown in for the occasion: Paul Greening from the Singapore office, Dickson Chin of New York and Dan Howard of Jones Day’s Brisbane offices. From the in-house legal side, we were delighted to welcome 20 of Tokyo’s top counsel, including those representing large multinational companies and Sogo Shosha, major Japanese-headquartered conglomerates.
Paul Greening and Dan Howard opened proceedings by giving a run down on different carbon market structures around APAC, highlighting which approaches have already come into force and which may be on the horizon in the future which could affect the Japanese market. Throughout, the point was emphasised that companies in Japan will be dealing with further regulation on their carbon emissions over time as the push towards cast-iron sustainability goals intensifies.
Lin and Kratochvil gave their perspective on the ground in Tokyo as to how their client base is reacting to sustainability measures and how their expertise can allow businesses to find creative solutions to issues they have encountered when enacting strategy.
Dickson Chin drove the conversation home with a comprehensive global rundown of how carbon markets have developed in both the United States and Europe. Managing to provide both a detailed instruction on sophisticated financial instruments and practical strategies for deals, this section of the conversation was particularly remarked upon by those in attendance.
Networking and Q&A followed, with everyone in attendance being presented with an extensive information pack for them to refer to when explaining concepts to their business leaders.
The Legal 500 is delighted that we were able to have such an esteemed group of attendees at this hugely informative roundtable. We look forward to many more events in Tokyo in the future.
