Interviewed for our in-house lawyer survey, some leading general counsel give their views on ethics, law firm engagement and technology
Great expectations
‘There’s no question that stakeholders and the population at large have higher expectations of ethical conduct by companies and that this is only going to increase. Some of that will manifest itself as greater regulation. In-house functions play a greater role in ethical matters. It’s not just advising on legal issues – in-house functions can play a leading role in ensuring companies continue to follow the ethical path.’
Richard Price, group general counsel, Anglo American
Opposites attract
‘We’re in an industry in which the judgement calls we make, particularly around technology and investment, are long-term, ten or 20-year plays, whereas we know regulation or politics has a much shorter timeline. We’re helping the business navigate those conflicting forces: predicting and then if you get it wrong or things change, helping the business interpret the challenge. It keeps us very busy.’
Sabine Chalmers, group general counsel, BT
Broad strokes
‘All good law firms now understand that they need to be responsive and customer focused because otherwise clients will find that other advisers are willing to be. They’re seeing competition from some of the Big Four and other consultants. For example, we use KPMG for data protection. The Magic Circle and big corporate firms will probably keep moving away from the others, and the others will have to reinvent themselves in terms of becoming a broader service offering. That’s still a way off; firms are still doing quite nicely generally.’
Clare Wardle, general counsel and company secretary, Coca-Cola European Partners
‘If you plan to work in three to four different careers throughout your life, working 100-hour weeks does not translate to job security.’
Charlotte Heiss (pictured), RSA
Fool me once
‘Firms distinguishing themselves is increasingly difficult. They build systems but if it doesn’t add any value, clients aren’t falling for that anymore. There is also quite a bit of pressure on firms as clients get to understand themselves better. There is a lot of work that they do that is maybe done by mid-level associates that companies need to look at and think: “Why am I paying a lawyer to do that? I’m better-off using some internal resource to manage my transaction than paying £300 an hour to ensure they have a well-paginated due diligence report.”’
Chris Newby, EMEA general counsel and chief operating officer, AIG
Public relations
‘I’ve never had any business leader say to me: “Could we roll back our expenditure on regulatory compliance?” In this industry, it’s not something we’re going to do. Like all cost-overhead functions we have to justify our existence and demonstrate our value-add. I call it managing your publicity: if people hear nothing from you about what you’ve done, what you’ve achieved and how valuable it was, then they’ll probably draw the conclusion you haven’t done anything. The Venn diagram of lawyers and good salesmen has almost no overlap, so we have to train ourselves to do that.’
Philip Bramwell, group general counsel, BAE Systems
Tech Gap
‘It’s quite hard to use tech to do the stuff we do and the products on the market are so expensive. They don’t add value on what we can just do with a basic spreadsheet. It’s suboptimal, but it works. I’m sure at some point the tech on the market will become more scalable. If you speak to most of my peers who go and listen to tech people at conferences, they’ll tell you that what they say goes over the heads of 90% of people. If you’re a lawyer at Ford, you see it and think “lovely jubbly”, but if you’re at Spire, that just isn’t what lawyers do.’
Dan Toner, general counsel and group company secretary, Spire Healthcare
Hype mode
‘There’s a lot more focus on developing softer skills. It’s a very rich and interesting job for someone who wants to seize the opportunity. It’s linked with what happens on the legal tech front. My sense is that we are in “hype mode”; there’s a lot of excitement around, but in terms of really scalable stuff, there’s not a lot. When that AI and tech will be able to do a certain type of work better than lawyers, it will change the traditional space lawyers operate in. The nature of jobs will change.’
Rushad Abadan, group general counsel, Standard Life Aberdeen
Punch the clock?
‘We had a really big debate over whether we would go down the route of recording hours. The team practically had a mutiny against me when I suggested that. I’m not worried lawyers aren’t working hard, but unless you measure what people are working on, it’s hard to have the necessary conversations.’
Maaike de Bie, group general counsel, Royal Mail Group
Lost in translation
‘Increasingly, firms are struggling to get the next generation to buy in to the 100-hour week. I wish my generation were as bright as they are. They get more balance in their life and they are more sensible. They don’t want a job for life. If you plan to work in three to four different careers throughout your life, working 100-hour weeks does not translate to job security.’
Charlotte Heiss, group chief legal officer and company secretary, RSA
Under pressure
‘Soft skills are really vital and will just become more important. Leadership skills are fundamentally more important than pure legal skills in a way. You need to have a grounding and be a good lawyer, but more essential is to be able to embrace the pressure.’
Mark Maurice-Jones, UK and Ireland general counsel, Nestlé
Do the shuffle
‘It may sound a bit corporate, but we all know organisations that have a purpose perform better than those that don’t. Law firms often just shuffle their feet and partners say: “Our purpose is to make money.” If the corporate world finds that having a purpose is beneficial, I don’t know why law firms are not asking themselves that question.’
Rob Booth, general counsel and company secretary, The Crown Estate