What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?

I am incredibly passionate about diversity and inclusion, and I am fortunate to work for an organisation that has firmly embedded D&I into its culture and people’s practices. I am honoured to sit on several local, regional and divisional committees who work tirelessly to drive progress on diversity and inclusion topics, activate others and interface cross-divisionally and functionally within the Bank on its D&I initiatives. It has been a privilege to have a been actively involved in the delivery of some of the Bank’s key D&I objectives, including the delivery of unconscious bias training, partnering with HR to further embed diversity and inclusion considerations into our recruitment, objective setting and employee feedback processes, rolling out flexible working models and participating in employee empowerment and wellbeing initiatives. In addition, the opportunity to partner with external law firms, clients, industry bodies and other business partners on diversity and inclusion initiatives, sharing experiences, best practices and mutual expectations, has ultimately strengthened those relationships and the communities in which the Bank operates.

I have also been very fortunate to work with and for a number of outstanding colleagues, both at Deutsche Bank and in my earlier private practice career at Clifford Chance, and who have very much acted as mentors and role models to me as my career has progressed. I am therefore very proud to participate in the Bank’s legal department mentoring programme as a mentor now. It has been incredibly rewarding to play a key role in the successes and wider professional development of my mentees, as well as being an opportunity for me to further develop my own management and leadership skills – seeing issues and challenges through the lens of my mentees, and how they interpret those situations gives me great perspective and has been invaluable to my own continuing career progression.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

I think that the role and skillset of an in-house lawyer, and particularly the general counsel, continues to evolve and change. While clearly things will work differently to an extent in every organisation, there nonetheless seems to an ever-increasing trend for in-house counsel to be involved in, and a trusted adviser across, all facets of the business and its strategic priorities. Accordingly, agility and versatility, and the ability to add value to your organisation beyond pure legal work, are fundamental qualities of today’s in-house lawyer. We have seen across the wider banking industry a deepened and accelerated investment in, and commitment to, automatisation, digitalisation, leaner processes and global platform offerings, and which have included, for example, e-signature, electronic document acceptance solutions across multiple jurisdictions, and innovative payment services application integration in emerging market jurisdictions. To be effective in this environment, in-house lawyers need to be able to respond and adapt to these ever-changing demands and challenges. Resilience therefore also continues to be a critical skill for in-house lawyers, particularly as our industry continues to grapple with heightened workloads, internal and external cost pressures and specific macro and micro-level challenges as a result of increasingly regulatory change and scrutiny, hybrid working models and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.