What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Metricon’s legal team advises across the entire Metricon Group with matters in areas of law including IP, procurement, commercial, building contracts, ICT, privacy, spam, development deeds, statutory interpretation, compliance, insurance, litigation, consumer law, building disputes, JV’s mediation, and general ad-hoc advice. The nature of Metricon’s operations means that the team may be advising Metricon on business to customer, business to business, business to government, or business to foreign investor transactions, which all require different contracting arrangements and are governed by various legislation, differing between each state.

In addition to BAU work, the legal team is involved in many projects to deliver greater efficiencies to the business. Several larger projects have included a digital transformation project to deliver more with less. This has involved implementing technology solutions to streamline delivery of advice and capturing data to review and assess the Metricon business areas that require further legal assistance and training. We have partnered with Metricon’s learning and development team to bring face-to-face training modules online and has undertaken a review and reform of our procurement documentation to assist our teams in both the direct and in-direct procurement areas.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?   

The pandemics shift to remote working together with the fast adoption of technologies that allowed remote meetings, online witnessing of documents and electronic signatures to name a few, provided in-house legal teams greater efficiencies in delivery of advice and benefits for flexibility when working. In addition, the ability to attend hearings for Court or Tribunals, mediations, and meetings remotely with external stakeholders, without travel or lengthy commute times has provided in-house teams the ability to work more seamlessly with these parties, as well as across offices where companies’ operations are located.

As for the work of in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel changing post pandemic, the pandemic shone a light on the role of in-house legal teams as in the course of the pandemic, in-house counsel had to keep abreast with and understand the changes in the legal and regulatory landscape and provide crucial advice to the business as to the implications of health directives as well as broader impacts on BAU in the areas of supply chain, contracts, IT security, OHS and human resources to name only a few. The pandemic also saw the broadening of the general counsel role to be more strategic in working as a key member of the senior leadership team, highlighting the importance of a focus on risk mitigation, strategic planning, and crisis management planning.