Fantastic as I look in a DJ, I wouldn’t say by character I’m a natural awards-type person but I have always said that if you are going to do an awards ceremony, there’s no point unless you do it really well. And doing it well means putting your shoulder to the wheel in the research and judging. Which brings me to the 18th Legal Business Awards, which we will be holding later this month.
While we have traditionally judged the awards internally, it had long been my intention to set up an external judging panel to bring in outside scrutiny and increase the rigour of the process. Though we have always put a lot of effort into drawing up the shortlists and selecting the winners, inevitably having knowledgeable outsiders keeps you on your toes, increases the focus on the process and makes it harder to be swayed by personal bias.
The distinguished panel of judges kind enough to give their time this year comprised the following senior general counsel: Michael Shaw (Barclays); Andrew Whittaker (Lloyds Banking Group); Robert Ivens (Marks & Spencer); Adrian de Souza (Land Securities); Siobhan Moriarty (Diageo); Michael Herlihy (Smiths Group); Kirsty Cooper (Aviva); Claire Chapman (Daily Mail and General Trust) and Alison Kay (National Grid). In addition we had Jomati founder Tony Williams and Paul Gilbert of LBC Wise Counsel, while myself and our managing editor Mark McAteer were also on the panel as judging members.
Though we trundled a big box of printed award submissions to the judging day there was no need because the judges – being lawyers and stand up people – had already read the submissions they had been sent ahead of the day (which, believe me, took some doing).
As we tie our awards in with our annual GC Power List report, which you can read with this issue of Legal Business, we also fed in the substantial research from that project for our in-house awards.
If you are going to do an awards ceremony, there’s no point unless you do it really well.
Working with the external panel it was clear that there are ways in which we can refine and improve the judging process in the years ahead, particularly around publishing clearer criteria on which awards are judged. We’ll also be looking at additional sourcing and research to bolster the process. These things are not cheap to attend, so it’s incumbent on us to put on a Rolls-Royce product and keep improving it.
Thankfully the awards this year moves out of frosty February into March so hopefully it will be the biggest and best we have put on. With the GC Power List reception being held before the ceremony and our judging panel invited to attend, there should be well over 100 in-house counsel there on the night to break up the private practice love-in. Our host for the evening is one Jeremy Paxman. I’ll be seeing over 1,000 of you there and I pledge to keep the cheesy disco musak on the soundtrack to an absolute minimum and not mention Magna Carta once.
alex.novarese@legalease.co.uk