About

Kirkland Hicks describes his company, created via a merger in 2010, as ‘well run, with a great leadership team and an engaged and supportive board of directors’. His own leadership style appears to correlate, as he is highly committed to developing and nurturing talent, and believes transparency is important when it comes to department decision-making. He wants his associates to ‘feel they have a good quality of life, are appropriately rewarded for their contributions and have opportunities to grow and develop’. This philosophy is born out of 13+ years experience at the company, during which time he managed various smaller teams and worked on an array of different projects, with associates and managers at all levels. His appointment as GC last November was undoubtedly well-deserved, and he muses that ‘becoming secretary to our executive management team in 2006 was probably the single-most important development role leading up to my current role’. His commitment to talent development is complemented by his interest in diversity initiatives; he recently joined the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. And when it comes to outside counsel, Hicks has various ideas about how to create an even more cohesive team, while also curtailing costs: ‘We have developed protocols for outside counsel and are just starting to send those out. We are in the process of acquiring an e-billing system. We are looking at reducing the roster of outside firms we use, with a focus on forging mutually beneficial partnerships with firms that really want to work with us’.