Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?  

We recently collaborated with our finance colleagues in relation to a proof of concept for a combined procurement approval and payment workflow within our enterprise finance system. This required us to review our team’s contract review and approval processes (which are email and document-based) and adapt and consolidate these into the new workflow. The workflow uses our existing core finance system and requires minimal development work, with the majority of design and configuration work done collaboratively by legal and finance teams. Ultimately, there was no financial cost to legal, and this has resulted in significant efficiencies in our end-to-end contact review and approval lifecycle. 

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why? 

I have a young family, and so I strive to balance my career with spending as much time as possible with my partner and our two sons. I thoroughly enjoy being a dad, and I am passionate about sharing parental responsibilities with my partner. In the work context, I try to be a role model for working flexibly and promoting equality in parental leave policies. Covid has benefited flexible working, but even now we are back in the office, I work around school drop-off and pickups and other childcare needs which means leaving the office at 4pm most days. In a previous in-house role, I advocated strongly for parental leave equality, and when I worked in private practice, I was one of the first fee-earners to take paternity leave for three months (the maximum amount on offer at the time).