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

The number one challenge over the past year has been managing the continued impact of external events. After the ongoing acute impacts of Covid in 2020, 2021 and 2022, we moved from a react phase to a more proactive response on people and operations, focusing on the lasting changes that COVID has brought to our work. Challenges also arose due to the ongoing effects of La Nina weather patterns across Australia, with severe floods and storms impacting accessibility to and often damaging critical infrastructure and affecting other elements of the supply chain. Navigating these challenges successfully came down to being resilient and remaining adaptable and flexible, and learning from each event so that we could prepare for and manage future events efficiently and effectively and minimise the impacts on people, services and customers as much as possible.

What technological advances do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

The advent of Chat GPT and AI like it will challenge teams in many businesses, and legal teams will be protected from its reach. In-house legal teams will need to be able to help the company manage these technical advances and understand the risks that may arise from their use — be that privacy or confidentiality considerations, for example, or the risks around the use or reliance on materials, advice, guidance or design generated by a bot. However, while there will likely be negative impacts, forward-thinking in-house legal teams will also see these advances as presenting exciting, positive possibilities for companies if they can understand those risks and limitations and navigate their groups and business through those. The ability to harness the collective knowledge of the internet to generate standard or non-confidential documentation, policies, and templates could be used to enhance the efficiency and productiveness of the legal teams themselves. The legal department will need to use that knowledge and understanding to guide the business in how such technology can be leveraged and utilised while considering any legal issues or risks, which could unlock many potential uses across the business.

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

All in-house lawyers need to have positive, strong relationships across the organisation and be recognised by the business as having an excellent understanding of the operations and commercials of the company – this provides the foundation to be a trusted partner with influence in the business to help work together to get to the best outcomes. In infrastructure businesses, resilience, as lawyers, as legal teams and as an overall business is critical for success. With rapidly changing external environments, in particular the impacts of increasing and extreme weather events on physical infrastructure, or the changing regulatory environments in which the business operates, in-house lawyers need to be resilient to move quickly to address any immediate issues and impacts, integrate learnings from those changes and events to be more prepared and pro-active for future events and, help the business to anticipate and influence changes, where possible.