Land Securities Group GC Tim Ashby describes his comparatively-small in-house team as typical for the real estate sphere, but the magnitude of the work it completes is anything but ordinary. Ashby and head of legal Alex Peeke modestly recount their involvement in the £1.3bn sale of the iconic Walkie Talkie skyscraper last year. Mayer Brown, Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang advised as Landsec sold the building at 20 Fenchurch Street to Hong Kong investors LKK Health Products Group, but Ashby and Peeke argue that credit is due to predecessor Sally MacGregor, who was responsible for setting up the initial joint venture to own the building with Canary Wharf in 2010. Peeke says: ‘We continue to look after the building, making sure [the tenants’] experience stays the same. This is a continuous project.’ Outside of the Walkie Talkie sale, another major acquisition in 2017 saw Landsec open Westgate shopping centre in a £440m joint venture with The Crown Estate. Landsec’s deputy head of legal services Ian Petts was instrumental in getting the Westgate deal over the line, with Ashby saying: ‘It was a long process with masses of work and it has been run confidently. Ian Pett stands out.’ Despite the relativelysmall team, Landsec has substantial tech ambitions, with Ashby revealing that he is actively looking and having conversations with law firms about how machine learning could improve the company’s document management systems. Furthermore, an office move 12 months ago has instigated an electronic drive. Ashby says: ‘We are not sitting here with filing cabinets – we are 90% paperless.’ Ashby contends that Landsec’s ratio of work done internally compared to externally mirrors the company’s wider peer group. ‘All of our work is done externally. There’s no deal that we do without a firm. We would get a legal team of 60-70 lawyers to do everything. All of our peer group run the same model as us. There’s no cost benefit in changing it.’ Landsec currently operates a core property panel comprising three firms: BLP, Eversheds Sutherland and CMS. On the corporate side, Magic Circle outfits Slaughter and May and Allen & Overy are the regular advisers.