About

Comprised of 25 lawyers and five support staff, the legal team at Australian energy company Origin Energy is led by general counsel Andre Clarke. Internally the team recently designed, built and implemented its own proprietary Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) solution for the review and settlement of high volume contracts. ‘Once the pilot program was successfully completed, the LPO solution was rolled out across Origin and now captures around 70% of our procurement contracts, reducing costs by up to 60% and freeing up in-house legal team time for those tasks where our “value-add” is better allocated’, says Clarke. Since 2010, the lawyers supporting Origin’s oil and gas business have been focused on the delivery of the upstream component of the Australia Pacific LNG project worth $25bn AUD. Following completion of the development phase, the team continues to provide leadership in managing the challenges of running a coal seam gas business in an industry that continues to face social and regulatory scrutiny. Meanwhile, the lawyers supporting Origin’s Energy Markets business have been part of Origin achieving its strategic goal of expanding its renewable energy portfolio and creating innovative energy solutions for the modern economy. ‘Origin Legal, using only internal resources, has developed new solutions for solar and emerging businesses (like battery storage) which balance Origin’s legal obligations in a highly regulated industry with its need for agility in the face of substantial disruption’ says Clarke. The products launched by Origin over the last year include Tesla batteries, solar servicing, new centralised energy services and Predictable Plan, a fixed monthly price for all electricity used. The team demonstrated its value and negotiation when Origin decided to sell a number of wind farms, an electricity station and a number of pipelines, all as part of a balance sheet repair strategy. From an estimated sale of $400m AUD, the team achieved sales proceeds of $1bn AUD and allowed Origin to exceed its announced asset sale and debt settlement targets. Continuing their sterling work, the team is currently working on the proposed divestment of the upstream conventional gas business via an IPO or trade sale.