About

Team size: Four

Major legal advisers: DLA Piper and K&L Gates

What are the most important transactions, litigations or other major projects that you have been involved in during the last year?

As was in the news in Q1 2020, Hexcel Corporation and Woodward Inc. announced a merger of equals in early January. This would have seen the companies go through a US$6.4bn all-stock merger, so the first part of the year saw an “all hands on deck” approach to supporting this project until it was cancelled in early April, owing to Covid-19. As Hexcel is a global advanced composites technology company with aerospace as its largest market, sales and demand were impacted on all levels by the Covid-19 crisis, as was seen in a number of other industries. Most projects and much of our energy from March 2020 through the end of the year had been centred around this naturally. Fortunately, given the improving state of the industry and Hexcel’s strong financial position and customer relationships, we are now able to turn our focus into more forward-looking strategic and process projects to support our global business.

What were the main difficulties your company faced during the initial Covid-19 lockdown?

One of our values is called One Hexcel, and it reflects how we collaborate – especially in uncertain times – to quickly take action to preserve our business, serve our customers, and support our employees. Initially, we quickly rallied to gather data to understand local practices that were rapidly changing. We shifted many employees from offices to work-from-home arrangements. Where needed according to the jurisdiction, we applied for and were approved as an essential business so our plants could remain operational to serve customers. Additionally, as continuing operations meant we had an obligation to our employees to take additional steps to ensure that our manufacturing sites were as clean and safe as possible and were in line with – or exceeded – the guidance provided by experts globally on Covid-19 prevention. In some instances, we temporarily closed plants to carry out extensive cleaning and implement new organisational and operational guidelines.

Has working from home inspired any innovation in terms of the way you or your team work? Are there any standout products or tech you now use that you never did before?

Taking into account that I only joined Hexcel in September 2019 and didn’t even have a full year to understand the cadence of the business and meetings, I have to say that I – and others – feel that we are so much more connected now than when we were in the offices! In order to ensure that everyone had sufficient support and networking opportunities within the team, we really encouraged people to utilise many different channels to stay connected (through email, Teams messaging, video calls, Teams and WhatsApp). We also realised the importance of having regular individual, regional and larger law department (17 people) meetings, this was critical for people to feel that they were aware of what was happening in the different regions and to create a good forum to have help and support from others.

I think that people have already forgotten the just how challenging the initial Covid-19 lockdown was – people left offices in a rush, sometimes with full IT kit, sometimes without, thinking that they were going to be back in a week or two. Added into that the stress of having children at home, worrying about loved ones, queues at every shop, sometimes having a lack of food security (depending on the area or country), fear about getting ill, and then, on top of all of this, you add what was possibly the busiest working period I have ever been through – echoed in many of my peers’ experiences. We pivoted constantly, robustly managing change and change management, fire-fighting at all hours, while juggling domestic Covid-19 bliss and not dropping any of the fragile balls that we had in the air, for months on end. I don’t know if it would be called innovation or not but we found that we have a much greater capacity for overall flexibility – whether this is in terms of stepping away throughout the day to do what’s needed without having to justify or explain, or picking up a new kind of legal work that you may not have had to do, or even breaking down the finding new ways to connect with peers. I think that working from home really inspired us to look for workable, human-sized solutions to issues that we were facing.

How have you or your team found working from home, and is this a work practice you intend to carry forward post-pandemic? How important is face-to-face interaction for a legal team to function well?

Working from home absolutely has it benefits and my team seemed to transition very well into it. The reality is that, depending on the type of business that you’re in and the nature of your work, it is very tempting to say that all anyone needs is an internet connection and the proper tech. Like most who would give their personal opinions on this, a blended approach seems to be the general consensus, be it in the office only one day a week or in it four days a week. I think that working from home doesn’t currently address a couple of issues though: (i) people, especially new hires and those still in the beginning of their careers need people around them in order to have a strong learning forum, connection to the company culture and to have an informal support network; (ii) big project kick off meetings, leadership team meetings, etc. can all absolutely be done remotely but what is missed is the brainstorming planning sessions, running into people before dinner to talk about issues or ideas, the casual interactions, and seeing how our colleagues connect and work with each other provide a great deal of information that you don’t really realise is missing until you are no longer part of it; (iii) people are social creatures and law is a people business – only communicating through online meetings can be wearing – we are not all hermits for a reason – we want to be around people at least some of the time, and missing the human connection can negatively impact our teams and our connections with others. As a business, Hexcel has not yet finalised a new approach to the working practice post-pandemic.

If you operate within Europe, do you anticipate our new economic relationship with Europe altering your operations on the continent in any way, or how you would outsource legal services?

The new economic relationship will not impact how Hexcel engages with our legal advisors, etc. Of course, Brexit has an impact on how the company operates in Europe but the extent to which it will impact operations has not yet fully been assessed.