About

Team size: 300
Major law firms used: Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Herbert Smith Freehills, Linklaters

‘We are increasingly ensuring our lawyers, save for where they absolutely have to be subject-matter experts, are more flexible and multi-skilled,’ says The Royal Bank of Scotland GC Michael Shaw. ‘That includes focusing on their relationship and influencing skills, as well as technical.’

Litigation and investigations have dominated the workload of RBS’ in-house legal team since the financial crisis, but Shaw says that is slowly subsiding. Regulation, of course, continues to dominate, with ring-fencing, MiFID II and GDPR all proving big projects. The bank has also been restructuring to prepare for a no-deal Brexit and responding to regulatory reviews in retail banking.

Shaw, who joined RBS from Barclays in 2016, says that, aside from those major projects, the bank has been reorganising itself and focusing more on the digitisation of financial services. This has required a broader and more flexible approach from his lawyers and led to the creation of a gig-resourcing initiative a year ago: projects and pieces of work are put on a noticeboard for lawyers to volunteer to work on. ‘It’s a way of providing people with additional opportunities over and above secondments. It gives them a broader range of opportunities and experience.’

RBS completed a panel review at the end of 2018 and implemented its first-ever flexible-resource provider panel. That will provide additional resource to supplement external and in-house counsel, says Shaw, particularly as firms are providing fewer secondees.