What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

I believe that there are three key challenges that we will need to successfully navigate.

As our workforce transitions into a post-Covid way of working, it has been challenging to strike a balance between promoting and respecting flexible work while ensuring effective teamwork and collaboration across team members and the broader business. It is critical for our team to remain cohesive, supportive of our shared ambitions while maintaining the strong culture of collaboration and innovation which we have built.

The second challenge is retaining and developing our talent. Apart from the highly competitive market for talent, it is important for me to ensure the continued development of people within our legal team. In the past year, team members have had the benefit of participating in our Women in Leadership program which we co-designed with Monash University. They have also participated in internal leadership programs offered through ENGIE University in Paris and embarked on secondment opportunities in our overseas offices. These programs are designed to increase their exposure to new ideas and markets to accelerate their learning and development.

The third challenge is continuing to manage increasingly difficult work – both in terms of complexity and volume – while simultaneously ensuring disciplined management of legal budgets. Ensuring that our team spends more time on value adding, strategic support remains a key component of this.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

In the past year, we have invested significant resources (both time and money) to roll out a new legal technology platform across the business. The purpose of this platform is to provide matter management, document approval workflow and execution, document storage and contract automation. While it is still relatively new, the feedback from users across the business has been overwhelmingly positive. This is supported by data which indicates a shorter amount of time is needed to prepare and execute documents. Additionally, I am staying updated on the evolution of AI within the legal industry – while it is still in its early phase, I find the potential application of tools such as ChatGPT in law to be incredibly fascinating.

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

In-house lawyers should be able to deliver multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences – for example, one-on-one, small and large groups across diverse position levels. Also, it is critical to quickly adapt one’s influencing style and approach to gain the support and commitment of others

Managing ambiguity and complexity in order to operate efficiently when things are uncertain or unclear, and being able to make sense of complex information to effectively solve problems and learn from both successes and failures is another unique quality I look for in an in-house lawyer.

An in-house lawyer should also develop a detailed understanding of the needs of customers and internal stakeholders, establishing and maintaining strong relationships with them and delivering commercial, customer-centric solutions.

Finally, the successful in-house lawyer is result oriented, able to consistently deliver results and accomplishing objectives despite obstacles and setbacks.