About

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

The pace of technological change and innovation is transforming our industry. With this, consumer expectations continue to grow and change. At the same time there is an ever increasing complex regulatory environment not just domestically, but internationally. In particular, we have regulators strengthening privacy and data protection laws around the world and more often than not, these regulatory changes represent a government’s view of community expectations. Therefore, if an organisation is already having these conversations internally and understands customer needs, they will be well prepared for those legislative changes.

At Telstra, we take customer privacy very seriously and consider compliance with privacy laws as a minimum benchmark. We seek to align ourselves with customers’ expectations and always ask ourselves “what would customers expect us to do?”. As new products and services come on the market it is vital that regulation adapts in time with this change, pre-empting it where it can.

Are you taking any special measures to deal with the emerging “hot topic” of data protection and cybersecurity?

We take the privacy and security of our customers, data and network seriously. We know how important it is for our customers to know that their data is handled with the utmost care and consideration, and we are very aware of the damage, loss and betrayal that is caused if that trust is accidentally broken. In addition to the devastating impact felt by our customers, a significant data breach could also result in loss of confidence and damage to our brand.

We have a comprehensive cyber security strategy and framework in place, endorsed by our board. Our internal cyber security capability drives leading edge operational capabilities supported by excellence in people, processes and technologies. We know that cyber security is as much about people as it is technology, and we treat cyber security as a shared accountability, recognising everyone has a role to play in protecting our organisation.

Our pioneering “Influence” programme drives initiatives to influence cyber security behaviours and decision-making, and to ensure cyber security is front of mind for all Telstra staff. A recent initiative has been the roll out of an email banner in an effort to make it easier for staff to spot potential phishing attempts at the time they are received (noting this is only one of the controls we have in place to minimise the threat of phishing to Telstra). Another initiative of the Influence programme is our “Security Evangelist” programme. This identifies and recognises cyber security enthusiasts across the organisation, who act as ambassadors by promoting cyber security messages and best practices within their teams and networks. It has representatives from all of Telstra’s functions, all states and territories, and seven countries.

Telstra’s legal team works under the “All Roles Flex” policy, which facilitates staff working remotely, part-time or job sharing. What difference does this culture of workplace flexibility make to in-house legal support, and is it something you would encourage your peers to adopt?

Telstra recognises that our people have important lives outside of work that don’t rigidly fit into the traditional work timetable. Many years ago, we made flexibility the starting point for every role, that is, we start with the assumption that all roles can be performed flexibly unless there is a good commercial reason why not.

We’ve continued to invest in technology that makes it easy to stay connected, whenever and wherever we work, as our team is spread all over the world. We use video calling and online tools to connect on a daily basis. Flexibility means different things for different people and different work types. “All Roles Flex” recognises arrangements such as different working hours, working at other locations, and working reduced hours. This might be on an ad hoc basis or on an ongoing basis.

I would actively encourage my peers to adopt a similar policy. Having this type of policy assists with having a diverse workforce which is a business imperative – diversity of thought, experience, gender, culture, background, and ways of working are important ingredients for competitive advantages in business as we better understand our customers and retention of talent.

What specific attributes do you think the “lawyer of the future” should possess?

There will always be a need for lawyers to be fully qualified and provide legal advice. However, with more technological advancements, lawyers will move to more strategic work, where judgment is required, emotional intelligence is essential. Technology will complement and enhance the service we provide today. But the skill sets of lawyers is changing, and they do have to be willing to change and embrace technology. In addition, at Telstra, we have adopted “Agile at Scale”. Whilst the whole legal team is not fully “Agile”, they need to be able to support teams that are. To be a great team, whether you are lawyers, football teams, political parties or boards, you need to innovate. It’s a bit of a buzzword but, at its most simple, it means changing processes, methods, products or ideas.

Innovation doesn’t have to be a revolutionary or transformative process – great teams innovate every day in even the smallest things they do. One of the drivers of innovation is cost – as in-house legal teams we are always being asked to do “more with less” – although, I actually think we need to start thinking about this as doing “less with less”. As a profession we are really making great progress but we have a long way to go. As Thomas Edison said, ‘there is a better way – find it’.