About

How do you demonstrate the value of your team’s work to the business?

The team is closely aligned to our board and executive team and their dedicated strategy of proactively shaping the profession of the future to deliver value for our members as they embark on their journey to become difference makers. Our value proposition is based on our intimate understanding of CA ANZ’s purpose, strategic objectives, values and operations. As a member-centric organisation, our vision is to be difference makers and to empower our members to make a difference in the communities in which they work and live. Legal’s strategy is built on these objectives and how we achieve this by demonstrating our values – collaborating for success, displaying integrity in all we do, embracing diversity, being accountable to ourselves and others and demonstrating a passion to grow and improve.

We are a metrics-focused team that understands the need to make data-driven decisions about what we do, why we do it and how we do it. We have achieved this by building trusted relationships across the business and getting strong stakeholder buy-in for what the legal team is responsible for and what the business is responsible for.

This year, we worked with our key stakeholders to agree on an innovative, progressive Legal Service Level Agreement which has been endorsed by our board, CEO and executive team. This a transparent metric-based agreement which sets out how legal has been designed to work with vision and purpose to drive responsible growth and manage risks in line with our risk appetite. We ensure our focus and energy is directed towards achieving our vision by developing, assessing ourselves against, and annually revising our strategy.

Our business is constantly evolving and we need to be able to adapt to their ever-changing demands with speed, by enabling compliance at scale, removing friction and clarifying the “grey” areas. To achieve this, our KPIs include innovation intelligence and instilling a continuous improvement mindset across everything we touch. Our mantra is to be solution-oriented pathfinders – when the business tells us “what” commercial objectives they want to achieve, it’s our job to provide the “how’” pathways to success.

Amidst an ever-changing environment, what are the main ways in which you keep abreast of regulatory developments, and how do you get on top of them?

In an age of constant disruption it’s an ongoing challenge to keep ahead of the game in this space. The role of the legal/risk function in our business is also changing against the background of an increasingly complex regulatory operating environment across many of our key markets. The legal advice that our business needs is complex and highly nuanced. The complexity of the work and the need for skilled application of judgment means that it can be a challenge to exploit legal technology solutions because many of those available on the market are designed to support organisations that have a large number of very similar transactions.

The CA ANZ Group is a fairly regulated business but as we are not large enough to have different standards of compliance for each region, our operational model is based on complying with the highest threshold standard across the six jurisdictions where we operate, while also complying with any nuanced local regulatory requirements. To do this in a cost-efficient manner, we utilise a mix of technology solutions and external legal regulatory updates in offshore markets.

We provide quarterly regulatory updates to our executive team, board and audit and risk committee focusing on incoming regulatory changes that impact our operations. Our strategy is to obtain a deep understanding of the relevant regulatory changes and provide our advice through an operational lens so that we enable a compliant product/service delivery model.

The legal team also delivers an extensive annual compliance training programme to all staff. Our compliance training is practical, tailored to company operations, delivered in plain English and fun!

Your remit is multijurisdictional, meaning you are involved in a number of matters that span geographical locations, time zones and cultures – what advice would you give peers embarking on international in-house legal work?

It’s really key to build your cultural intelligence and soft skills in a manner that prepares you to effectively influence and deliver successful business outcomes across different markets.

I’m extremely grateful to have worked in a global FMCG company in my very first in-house role where my remit extended across 43 countries. My biggest learning from managing a de-centralised, cross-border team, was the importance of cultural sensitivity and local market knowledge. In many offshore markets, relationships are paramount; successful new market entry and product launches require localisation; a theoretical understanding of local regulatory requirements does not equate to effective operations; and without an ability to manage compliance at scale and build this into a continuous improvement cycle, it’s difficult to grow international market share.

The best advice I received was to find a mentor with a breadth of offshore market experience and ask them what worked and what didn’t. Build your cultural intelligence through networking, joining industry groups and utilising available tools and resources. Keep abreast of the changing global landscape and the impact of technological disruption and thought leadership in this space – I’m fascinated at how technology is often a common language across cultural and geographical borders. If you get an opportunity to work in different country – take it! There’s no substitute for on-the-ground international experience to provide a different perspective.

You have previously spoken to us about the introduction of automation and legal operations to your team – can you explain the benefits of introducing these methods to your day-to-day practice?

Our focus on legal operations and adopting legal technology has made the team more efficient and helped us demonstrate value in a transparent, data-driven manner. Our objective was to ensure that our resourcing choices give CA ANZ the highest return on effort and investment. This meant ensuring that the Legal Team’s focus is on work that falls into the high complexity and high strategic impact bucket. To do this, we had to identify the “churn” work (typically low complexity, high volume and low strategic impact), stop doing the unnecessary work and provide self-serve or automation options for the high volume/low risk work. We encouraged, coached and supported the team on adopting a transformation mind set which changed the way we worked – a move away from traditional lawyering to a much more dynamic, risk-based legal service delivery model.

The benefits have been huge! Our team is empowered, engaged and free to focus on the challenging work that requires them to exercise judgment and provide strategic value. There is a high level of engagement with our stakeholders and the feedback from our business has been fantastic – they value the legal team as a solution enabler and not a “department of no”!