Hicham Khellafi has enjoyed an exceptional career at Fortune 100-ranked Honeywell since joining a little over a decade ago in 2007. During this time, he has progressed from the rank of legal counsel to his current position as general counsel for the company’s Industrial Safety division in the EMEA region, which accounts for over $2bn in revenue. Over the course of this time, he feels he has improved the commercial side of his capabilities to a very high level. ‘Lawyers advising business need to have a great knowledge of how the business operates on a days to day basis’, he states, ‘as well as a very good knowledge of the products, customers and suppliers.

This is fundamental to be able to advise the business properly. Working in this business unit has trained me to provide answers that could translate immediately to practical business matters, as opposed to theoretical advice that is hard to understand and apply by the business’. Unsurprisingly for a general counsel in an international, multi-billion dollar revenue company such as Honeywell, Khellafi is keen to improve efficiencies in his department constantly, and is asked to ‘produce evidence of efficiency and quality while delivering maximum value’. Khellafi provides further detail on the systems and techniques he uses to achieve this: ‘I have therefore worked on automating routine processes such as contract management, and with my team we have put in place a process to manage the workflow of the contract review. This automated workflow manages the way we review contracts from submission by our sales teams to their execution, and is now used in other divisions of the company’. 

He lists collaboration with other business units as among the most important objectives to achieve in order to create a first-class legal function. ‘My first advice to a lawyer moving in to in-house work would be to spend time with your peers from other functions as much as possible’, he explains. ‘That, and to get into the field in order to facilitate their understanding of operations’.