Team size: 60 globally

Helen Barraclough is Group General Counsel and Company Secretary of Smith+Nephew, a FTSE100 global medical technology company operating in more than 100 countries. She is a member of the Executive Committee and leads the global Legal and Secretariat functions, advising the Board and senior management colleagues on strategic and operational matters. She also serves as Chief Risk Officer overseeing the global Enterprise Risk Management programme and strategy.

Barraclough has deep experience navigating complex regulatory environments and supporting the delivery of major transformation programmes, crisis management and corporate governance, adding value by enabling growth while safeguarding the organisation. She leads teams that operate as trusted business partners whilst effectively managing cost, developing talent and adopting technology.

She is a frequent speaker on various panel topics such as the agility of the legal function, the evolving role of the General Counsel, embracing change and technology and managing through uncertainty.

What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past 12 months?

We have focused on refining a legal strategy closely aligned to our enterprise strategic objectives to ensure that the S+N Legal team is in the best position to support the continuing Smith+Nephew transformation. Since Deepak Nath joined as CEO in 2022, our 12 Point Plan continues to demonstrate impact in driving higher revenue growth, improving productivity and expanding margin through a high-performance culture and our legal strategy is closely aligned with those strategic objectives.

Over the past 12 months, the Legal team has continued to support revenue growth and innovation through business partnering with cross functional teams and strategic advisory roles on M&A and R&D. We have supported our manufacturing network transformation including advising on our new Melton site near Hull, which has received a £12m investment from the UK government. Customer-centric contracting and continuous improvement in simplifying systems and processes is critical to the success of the organisation, enabling S+N to be easier to do business with and Legal is playing a broad role in identifying opportunities for improvement and supporting growth. We have also contributed to margin expansion through effective dispute management and rightsizing and rightshoring internal resources and footprint aligned to our global business. Through the use of tools, data analytics and strong partnership with our procurement team, we continue to support the management of external spend. The Legal team was benchmarked as ‘best in class’ in terms of spend management against peers of comparable size and risk profile. The past 12 months have also been busy from a governance and investor perspective, with new Executive and Non-Executive Directors joining the Board and the consultation and adoption of a new Remuneration Policy.

The Global Legal team has embedded an ethos of continuous improvement to drive optimal management of cost, spend, risk and resources. The Smith+Nephew Operating System is a LEAN-style approach focused on continuous improvement as part of Smith+Nephew’s ongoing commitment to flawless execution. Utilising this system, the S+N Global Legal Team continues to identify solutions and remove barriers to implement end-to-end solutions to resolve various pain points including workload intake, workload management, repeat advisory, alignment of AI objectives within enterprise priorities and reduction of legal ‘touches’ within enterprise process, systems and platforms. Many in-house legal teams have historically been criticised for overworking process and advisory approaches; use of the LEAN approach has helped to address a common challenge for in house teams who are asked annually to do ‘more with the same/more with less’. The S+N Operating System simplifies and streamlines our processes and workflows aligned to the organisation’s objectives and priorities. It also supports work/life balance and helps lawyers to focus on doing what they do best every day, in advising and partnering with the business, as opposed to spending time on administrative tasks or repeat advisory questions which add less value. We also continue to develop further KPIs and metrics to measure our added value and performance; what gets measured gets done.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Enterprise First leadership: It’s important to prioritise value creation with a focus on collaboration and shared success. In the current environment where regulation, legislation, political and macro developments are moving at pace, GCs need to lead from the front to build agility into informed decision making to enable flexibility to respond to change quickly which promotes the future health of the organisation.  Fostering a culture where colleagues can respectfully challenge and be challenged, in order to collectively arrive at the right informed, risk-based decisions for the long-term health of the enterprise is critical to adding value.

Proximity to the business: knowing your business and building and maintaining strong global networks, both within the organisation and externally, position a GC well to respond to changes and developments coming down the track in a volatile environment, and in evaluating the potential impact for the organisation.

Simplicity of approach to risk management: distilling policies, procedures and compliance frameworks with a principles-based approach gives clarity on what is important, while also allowing agility and flexibility to tailor responses to particular situations.

Prioritisation: deciding and clearly communicating the initiatives that will have the most impact on the organisation to effectively manage risk makes the organisation easier to do business with. It also frees up lawyers to focus on partnering with the business and doing what they do best every day.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on, of which you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful?

We all acknowledge that the potential for AI to change the legal landscape is huge. In the law firm environment, AI platforms and solutions should drive efficiencies for clients and provide additional data-focused legal/risk insights on which to base informed business decisions. In-house, we have an amazing opportunity to upskill teams with data analytics capabilities, create AI agents for churn/administrative tasks and deliver AI concierge services to drive continuous improvement and better risk management. AI has the potential to help in-house teams move from Good to Great.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about developing talented, high-performance teams and creating an environment where team members can thrive. I am privileged to lead an exceptionally talented team with strong credibility within our business, and I am committed to ensuring that our team members have the opportunity to customise their own personal development plans aligned to business needs in order to shape the trajectory of their in-house career.