About

Team size: 65, excluding Group HSE team

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last year?

The legal team played its part in fast tracking supply and customer contract negotiations, and trade compliance for new supply chain. One project of note was the Group’s legal team taking the lead on one of two consortiums delivering the UK ventilator challenge when the first lockdown started. The key role the legal team played on our side of the UK ventilator challenge consortium as the lead contact with the UK government cannot be over-stated. This was a hugely important initiative, and one that we, as a Group were proud to be involved in. It has helped the UK to be better placed in the ongoing fight against the pandemic. Our legal team played ensured that the consortium was legally robust in terms of meeting overall legal standards and that all future liabilities, including appropriate risk-sharing between the other businesses taking part, were taken account of.

More recently, the legal team has supported the ramp-up and supply of syringes and other products to ensure the vaccination of populations around the world against Covid-19 (specifically in the UK, US, Japan, Australia), such that Smiths needles will be used to inoculate around one third of the world. Our IP team has been instrumental in supporting this with our higher-dose-enabling products, and so did the contracting specialists, making sure that Smiths was in a good place from a contractual perspective.

We have also announced that we would renew the separation of the business by the summer. We have been working on demerger workstreams across legal to ensure we were on track to deliver this project.

In addition, we have supported the delivery of several large projects in other parts of Smiths’ businesses. With companies delaying spend and in some extreme cases suppliers going into liquidation during the pandemic, we worked hard to protect our aviation and aerospace businesses, and continued to focus on winning bids and on supporting our aftersales and service businesses to secure our revenue.

Now that travel and movement of people resume, Smiths’ cutting-edge detection technology will be at the forefront of safely getting the public back into airports and other public spaces. Our threat detection technology allows people to keep their electronics in their bags. The legal team worked on the bid to supply Heathrow Airport with this technology and were successful in securing the supply of detection products for the upgrade of the entire airport.

As to our M&A legal centre of excellence, it has delivered several transactions, including the acquisition of PathSensors with whom we are now working on the commercial and legal framework for selling products capable of detecting pathogens such as anthrax and Covid-19.

Smiths’ business lawyers have played a key part in many other transactions which had a positive impact on society during the pandemic in preparation of the post-pandemic word. It would be impossible to list them all, but I would also mention winning the contract to supply hyperboloid contacts used in the NASA Mars Perseverance Rover.

More generally, I am proud that the legal function has worked smart and hard. We protected Smiths revenues and keep serving our customers whilst dealing with the consequences of the pandemic on the organisation. In particular, we advised on operational issues, protected the company by renegotiating contracts, supported finance colleagues on credit risks and pushed to bring in cash.

How have you maintained your team’s cohesion when you have been unable to see them face-to-face as regularly as usual?

Smiths’ legal function is made up of five divisional teams which are closely aligned with their respective businesses and a number of centres of excellence which work across Smiths – Ethics and M&A, for instance. The heads of these teams were already part of a Legal Leadership Team (LLT), and they work together to keep our common legal strategy coherent. As a global function with teams in India, China, Germany, across the US, the UK and the Middle East, we are used to not being locate in the same physical place. However, from the months of 2020, we set up a monthly Zoom meeting, where I would update the entire team, and everyone could talk about issues such as wellbeing and shout-out successes.

To keep the team’s cohesion in balance, I have also sent out regular blogs, sharing company’s news and celebrating our individual successes. I have been keen to make time to talk about important world events over Zoom, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Individual sub-teams have held more frequent remote social events such as quizzes and birthday drinks, and other team members started activities on the own initiative. Things like a five km run challenge or bake-offs, for instance.

In addition to these, we have continued to drive forward our six-sigma yellow and green belt training via Zoom. Many of these projects involve team members across the whole function. We are working together on company-wide projects such as contract management tools and other efficiency and improvement projects.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving over the next few years?

GCs are expected to be full-time contributors to the business and to deliver the strategy equally with every other exco member. This makes it a very attractive career prospect for anyone who loves to be at the heart of business.

GCs are generally the only exco members that is responsible for the risk management perspective, and the ever-evolving nature of laws, regulations and governance codes, as well as business issues becoming more are more complex, require that keep up to date us to keep with new developments. The job offers great opportunities to learn and develop, but some lawyers coming into the profession are not willing to give that much time and energy to their job. I am concerned that the profession might lose some prime unless we address this.

Lawyers in general are increasingly sought-after to assist with all sorts of project in various business teams. Being in tune with the business as a whole helps us to do our job. There are only so many hours in the day, however, and we might spend more time on general business tasks than on legal itself. The need has never been greater for slick legal operations, and we to get used to the array of tools and technologies designed to help us support the in-house legal team. Data and information generated by legal – such as ethics and compliance statistics, contracting data, disputes data – are used more frequently than ever, for instance. They help us make all sorts of legal and business decisions. I see this as the next big evolution. In-house teams will have to get their heads and arms around this if they want to keep a competitive edge.