For Donny Ching and his huge inhouse legal team, 2017 represented an extended period of integration following the mega-merger between Royal Dutch Shell and British oil and gas company BG in 2016. Shell had publicly pledged to divest $30bn worth of assets to help fund the $54bn acquisition that was completed in February 2016 – a seemingly strenuous task. But according to GC Ching, Shell are already over the $20bn mark. It is clear there is a certain work ethic at Shell that enables the company to excel with such challenging matters and this is also demonstrated by the proportion of work that stays internal. Ching says that ten years ago, 60% of work was handled externally, compared to 40% internally. Now, it is the other way around. ‘One of the hallmarks of Shell legal is that we do a lot of work in-house. It gives us fantastic opportunities to grow and develop our lawyers, and to give them meaty work to focus on.’ Ching estimates that Shell’s external legal spend is merely in the ‘low $100,000s for some $1bn-plus deals.’ Shell’s legal team is broadly structured in alignment with the business.

As such, there are GCs for corporate, litigation, intellectual property and compliance. The company has also recently promoted Vincent Cordo, formerly global sourcing officer, to a new central legal operations role. ‘About three years ago we hired a pricing analyst from a law firm,’ Ching recalls. ‘We have a very clear focus, so I said to him: “Vince, we want to drive pricing with our law firms.” He’s transformed how we approach alternative fee arrangements, he knows how they calculate their rates and therefore we have pretty transparent conversations with firms. He’s really shown us the opportunities.’ Another member of Ching’s team worthy of recognition is Roberta Lewis, a senior legal counsel based in Houston, Texas. Lewis received an internal Shell award for network performance after devising an invaluable crisis management handbook that was distributed to all of the company’s worldwide legal teams, spanning 52 countries. Ching comments: ‘Of our biggest risks, a big safety or environmental problem, a refinery fire or an explosion, is absolutely on top of our risk matrix. How quickly can we respond to it? If something were to happen, who do you call? Who are the people you would invite into the crisis management team? Roberta was instrumental in bringing together a proper toolkit.’ As with peers, 2018 will see Shell contending with data privacy thanks to GDPR deadlines. Helen Graham, Shell’s chief privacy officer, will be ensuring that Shell stays compliant with the new regulation. According to Ching, it will be an uphill task: ‘Shell is the biggest retailer in the world. We have more retail stores than McDonald’s and Starbucks. Therefore we have been taking a lot of customer data.’