About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

Legal advice and contractual and negotiation support for the rollout of Sydney Water’s new procurement strategy for goods and services, called Partnering for Success (P4S). I have, along with the legal team, supported the delivery management and procurement teams with the two staged roll-out of P4S by having an embedded in-house lawyer as part of the project team. The delivery phase contracts will be based on the NEC4 suite of contracts from the UK. Sydney Water is the first major infrastructure company in Australia to use the NEC contract approach to deliver new works.

Secondly, legal advice and contractual and governance support for a new customer billing system and integrated technology platform for Sydney Water. This project, a NSW Government Project of State Significance, was successfully launched by Sydney Water in June 2019.

My team and I also gave legal advice on packaging claims made by wet wipes manufacturers as part of Sydney Water’s award winning “Keep Wipes Out of Pipes” campaign, and assisted the ACCC in their proceedings against manufacturers for misleading and deceptive conduct. The Federal Court hearing against one manufacturer commenced in September 2018, with the judgment handed down in June 2019. The ACCC are appealing this decision and Sydney Water will continue to provide water industry evidence for the purposes of this appeal.

What do you predict will be the biggest change in the legal market in your sector over the next few years?

Looking to alternative models for regulation approaches and legal frameworks for water re-use, given Australia’s drought crisis and forecasted population growth – in particular, providing specialist legal advice for Sydney to be a water sensitive city and integrated water cycle management options. Also, the increasing demand by in-house clients for self-service or automated contracts for routine and high volume areas, and for self-service legal advice on low risk issues. Lastly, filling short-term legal resourcing gaps using New Law models.

How have you attempted to bring the legal department closer to your business colleagues?

Where beneficial for the business client, I have dedicated specialist lawyers embedded in the business – for example our property team and our delivery management team have a dedicated in-house lawyer each. Although they are part of my legal and corporate secretariat team, they are co-located with their business clients and participate in the business client’s leadership meetings. I’ve also been volunteering my team members to be part of dedicated project teams for strategic projects.

During my time as acting GM, people and corporate services in 2017/2018, where I had responsibility for the legal and corporate secretariat, people and change, business centre, risk, safety and wellbeing and internal audit teams (a group of approximately 200 direct and indirect reports), I was able to further demonstrate the ways lawyers can be strategic, commercially focussed and value adding. Consequently, on my return to the general counsel and corporate secretary role, the business readily recognises how its inhouse lawyers are more than just legal risk advisers.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

An online portal for Board of Director materials, accessible by my team, the executive team and each director and a centralised portal and standard template form – which was created in-house by my team – for the business to complete and then log new legal requests for assistance. The latter has an additional automation tool created to assist me in allocating matters to the legal team and to advise the client on who is their allocated in-house lawyer.

My team and I have also drafted standard basic procurement and confidentiality agreements, some of which are available for download by the business on our company intranet, with embedded macros to assist the business in completing any variables in the documents.

I do anticipate using additional new “legal tech” in the near future, in addition to customising new technology used by our organisation where possible, so that it can be suitable for our legal and corporate secretariat team.

How much influence do you, as an in-house legal leader, have on the diversity and inclusions policies of your organisation?

As general counsel and corporate secretary at Sydney Water, I am part of a leadership team that also includes our people and change team, and so I regularly have the opportunity to contribute to programmes and policies focussed on diversity and inclusion. As a standing attendee at each Sydney Water Board meeting, I am fortunate to assist in the discussions at the highest level of the organisation on workplace culture, including diversity and inclusion policies.

What do you do personally to promote diversity and inclusion in your company? In your team?

I use my visible diversity to champion change, including supporting Sydney Water’s corporate strategy team to develop policies to improve Sydney Water’s cultural diversity at its leadership level.

During my time as acting GM, people and corporate services in 2017/2018, where my remit included the people and change team, I was fortunate to chair our diversity and inclusion taskforce, which is made up of Sydney Water personnel across the business who are passionate about diversity and inclusion at Sydney Water.

There are both male and female lawyers in my legal and corporate secretariat team who work flexibly – including part-time and/or regular remote working days – to accommodate their lifestyle needs. Some reasons are to care for small children, but others are to allow for more balance in their lives, including to pursue other interests, such as yoga, home renovations or golf.