Team size: 18

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?

The implementation of self-service tools to provide assistance to the different business units we serve has improved the team’s time management, as well as significantly shortening the response time to the organisation’s different requirements. We have also deployed document and information management systems that allows all team members easy access to relevant information in our area, eliminating the risk of losing information or having delays in accessing relevant documentation.

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years?

The key development in our field, as is the case in many others, will be technology, not just AI, but different platforms for managing legal activities will generate efficiencies that will allow us to leverage many of the core responsibilities of the legal function in technology. In the immediate future, there will be technology that will enable the necessary activities of key legal responsibilities such as contracts and corporate secretarial work to be completed in short timescales and with limited human intervention. Legal teams will not disappear, but they will become smaller and much more specialised, and their main responsibilities will focus on providing sound strategic advice to the organisation.

What challenges have you encountered in implementing effective risk management practices, and how have you overcome them?

I believe the main challenge we face when implementing risk management is culture. There is a widespread misbelief that risk management and controls are the enemy of effective business dynamics; therefore, there is a natural resistance from business units to embrace change, when it is related to stronger controls and risk mitigation practices. In my personal experience, the best way to overcome this challenge is twofold. Firstly, having a risk management team that understands the business and has the right skills to educate the business units, as well as to react and manoeuvre to ensure the right balance between an appropriate control environment and commercial momentum. Second, get senior management behind your initiatives and support your programmes. Culture starts at the top, so if the top leadership supports what you do, the rest of the organisation will follow.