While the in-house profession has come of age, the number of home-grown trainees remains tiny. Legal Business assesses whether in-house teams should lessen their reliance on law firm-schooled staff
Despite talk of radical changes to legal education and burgeoning in-house legal teams in blue-chip organisations, there has been no real breakthrough in a mainstream plc route to qualification.
Continue reading “Lessons learned – will bluechip legal teams ever take training seriously?”
The energy giant’s group GC discusses the overhaul of its legal function
When the in-house legal team of a large corporate announces a ‘review’, it’s often enough to instil a sense of foreboding in its external legal panel. For the law firm, it’s likely to mean months of painstaking paper pushing, parading in front of senior lawyers (and, these days, possibly their bosses) and making promises they hope they can keep, particularly when it comes to costs versus service levels.
But at National Grid, things are a little different, for now at least. There is a review planned, but group general counsel (GC) and company secretary Alison Kay is determined to analyse service levels closer to home, starting with her own 31-strong UK team.
Welcome to Legal Business’ second annual GC Power List, which follows up on our successful launch last year. While we already knew we wanted the Power List to be an ongoing strand for Legal Business and its sister title The In-House Lawyer, reflecting the growing clout of in-house lawyers, attentive readers will note a shift in format from 2013. Since we didn’t feel the most influential senior general counsel (GC) would materially change in the space of 12 months, we decided it would be more worthwhile to this year focus on the rising stars of in-house legal. Continue reading “Rising Stars for 2014 – Introduction”
Twelve months ago, when Legal Business’s inaugural GC Power List landed, the global economic outlook was still decidedly bleak. Talk of a double-dip recession had started to feel like blind optimism, with global manufacturing output at its lowest level since 2009, unemployment in the eurozone at epidemic proportions and signs that the Chinese economic engine was beginning to falter.
A year on and there’s cause for cautious optimism, in the UK at least, with joblessness falling and it seems more reason for economists to be bullish about the strength of the recovery than for half a decade. Continue reading “Rising Stars for 2014 – RPC”
As the in-house profession has swelled in size and status in recent years the competition to secure a small number of high status senior roles has intensified. Legal Business asks what it takes to become a Rising Star when the bar keeps rising
What does it take to get ahead in the legal team of a major company? It seems an obvious enough question but despite the well-documented expansion of the in-house profession over the last 20 years, there is relatively little material on the career track for the ambitious in-house counsel.
Legal Business returned to its original GC Power List and other legal heads who have already climbed the ladder for insight into career development and how they try to help their star performers reach their potential.
Continue reading “GC Power List 2014 – The view from the top”
Collaboration has become a buzzword as progressive GCs press their advisers to parcel up work between them. Legal Business asks if such an approach can deliver the value its supporters claim
The battle to secure panel work is arduous for any law firm partner. With the threat of reduced panel slots and clients seeking more innovative examples of what separates firms from the competition, collaboration is increasingly becoming a buzzword among the more progressive general counsel (GC). As a condition of getting one of those coveted places on a major corporate’s panel, more firms are being asked to collaborate with all the other firms on the roster. They must communicate frequently, swap data and even, in some cases, pitch together for future pieces of work.
Continue reading “Joined up thinking – GCs push to make collaboration more than a buzzword”
The telecoms company’s GC discusses the challenges his company faces
Maurice Woolf’s candid recollection of shifting client-side into the telecoms world will resonate with anyone familiar with those heady dot.com-influenced boom days of the 1990s – including being caught up in some of the bust.
Much like many private practice lawyers, the former Denton Hall lawyer had his first taste of in-house life while on secondment at telecoms company Hermes Europe Railtel, which was eventually acquired by GTS, Woolf’s first in-house employer.
