John Lewis Partnership
Margaret Casely–Hayford wins praise from private practitioners for her evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, thinking. During her six years at the partnership, she introduced a more cost-efficient legal services model and effective governance and compliance framework for the business.
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Westfield Shoppingtowns
Leon Shelley’s first move out of private practice in 2000 as a banker at UBS Warburg was not well timed: he left just as the tech bubble burst. He returned to private practice before joining Westfield Shoppingtowns in 2005 as its first UK general counsel.
Ladbrokes
When Jonathan Adelman joined Ladbrokes in 2008, there was no internal legal team and a high external spend. In just four years, he transformed the gaming company’s in-house offering. The previous legal panel that was saturated with around 100 firms now has less than a dozen, reducing the typical spend of £8m-10m down to £4m-6m. He is particularly proud of his in-house team of six that he built from scratch.
Greggs
Jonathan Jowett’s most recent victory against the government-imposed ‘pasty-tax’, which raised Greggs’ share price by 9%, turned into a public remonstration generating over 500,000 petition signatures and protests in Whitehall.
Tesco
Adrian Morris’ team is vast – 250 staff, including 200 lawyers – but a company the size of Tesco needs a strong roster of external law firms to support that in-house team.
Merlin Entertainments Group
In running Merlin Entertainments Group’s legal team single-handedly, Colin Armstrong supports the entire group on all legal matters while his company secretarial function provides strategic and operational advice. Merlin is now the second-largest visitor attraction operator after Disney. The company manages 60 sites across Europe and the US, including family favourites such as Alton Towers, Sea Life, Legoland, Madame Tussauds, The Dungeons, Heide Park in Germany and the London Eye.
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Capital Shopping Centres
Hugh Ford has a small in-house team at Capital Shopping Centres – just one other lawyer and a secondee. But this means he loves the variety of his job, the ‘never quite knowing what issue is going to come across your desk next’.
Jones Lang LaSalle
Nicolas Taylor has been general counsel at Jones Lang LaSalle for eight years and manages a team of 20 lawyers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and praises the ‘fantastic team culture’ at the real estate services company.
SEGRO
Elizabeth Blease has been general counsel of industrial property owner and developer SEGRO since 2008.
Grosvenor
Ulrike Schwarz-Runer joined Grosvenor as general counsel in 2010 and is currently overseeing some major changes within her legal department, particularly mooting the possibility of having a formal law firm panel.
