About

Led by Dan Cootes, head of legal and company secretary at British Telecom (BT) Australasia, the legal, governance and compliance team supporting BT’s businesses in the region is made up of a mix of on-shore and off-shore support. In addition to three lawyers in Australia, the team is supported by advisers in South Africa, Hong Kong, India and the United Kingdom. A key feature of the team is the flexibility it has through the use of secondee services to fill in for longer FTE requirements. As Cootes explains, ‘we actively monitor a rotating set of external lawyers who are familiar with our business and can be engaged at short notice and in peak times for specific projects, ad-hoc advice or even a few days as required’. He also adds that, ‘we have actively worked on this off-shore model to operate less as an “invisible back-office” and rather interact directly with the business as a “first line” portal for new legal requests’. To this end, all local legal requests are funnelled through an online portal which registers, triages and tracks queries. Recently the legal team has revised their “deal review governance” to facilitate a culture of early engagement and trust in management. The team also takes pride in its role as lead legal and commercial negotiator for the business on its most complex transactions. It has concluded several large and complex deals in recent years including advising on, and constructing, managed cyber security platforms for major financial institutions over several years; and the global outsourcing of managed network services for leading multinationals in the mining and resources sectors. Another key member of the team is senior commercial lawyer Damien Porter who joined the BT LGC team in Sydney in January 2017 and brings significant commercial deal and government experience to the team. ‘BT’s security and government lines of business have received significant benefit from Damien’s expertise and knowledge of government contracting, and this area of business continues to grow in Australia’, according to Cootes. The team has developed a close and effective working relationship with the managing director, CFO and COO to ensure material decisions are made in a considered way for the benefit of the business and legal and commercial matters are actively prioritised so the team remains focused on the most important matters and is aligned with business strategy.