Legal team size: 5

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Identifying and addressing crises and instability involves engaging a cross-functional team to blend legal considerations with business imperatives. A primary focus is on health and safety, ensuring the well-being of people and addressing critical impacts such as injuries, fatalities, and disasters.
Maintaining a cool head during a crisis is essential, as it enables the objective recognition and mapping out of key compliance and legal issues. Crisis management templates, which should have been prepared in advance and tested, are crucial for providing direction and ensuring a structured approach. These templates can include processes for identifying key internal and contextual factors, such as using PEST or PEARL analysis to guide decision-making.  

Effective communication is becoming increasingly important in crisis management and legal support. Communication must be regular, proactive, and sustained, reaching all stakeholders involved, including business leaders, regulators, the media, and others closely connected to the crisis. The way you communicate and behave should be guided by organisational and personal values, such as transparency, integrity, inclusion, sustainability, and responsibility. These values should drive the response, rather than a focus solely on avoiding liability. While reviewing and analysing impacts and areas of liability is important, including ensuring privilege is maintained, it should not dictate the response to a crisis. 

In my experience, some crises have involved multiple fatalities in workplace accidents, violent worker strikes, and major government actions leading to fines and enforcement actions, all of which resulted in business stoppages. The legal strategy is tightly linked to the business strategy. Legal is involved in the formulation of the business’s strategic goals, and the legal strategy is crafted based on these objectives to ensure effective support in delivering business outcomes. 

In your opinion, what are the main trends affecting your work now?

Managing community expectations and relationships while enhancing collaboration and partnerships is essential to delivering social outcomes. There is an increased recognition of the importance of inclusion and diversity in businesses, driving greater involvement in fostering equitable workplaces. Embedding climate change considerations, along with responses to divisive social issues, transparency, and community impact, remains a key focus. The deepened involvement of technology and remote working presents greater opportunities to improve effectiveness and reduce costs. 

 What strategic priorities are guiding your legal team into 2025?

Providing effective legal support for the transition of a divested mine involves ensuring seamless legal services throughout the process. This includes addressing regulatory compliance, contract management, and risk mitigation to facilitate a smooth handover. 

Legal advice and strategic support are essential for the construction of a new mine, covering critical aspects such as land access, project management, and stakeholder engagement. Navigating complex legal and regulatory requirements ensures that the project progresses efficiently while maintaining compliance. 

A thorough review of business integrity and compliance initiatives is necessary to sustain effective delivery and promote a healthy, inclusive, and respectful workplace. Strengthening governance frameworks and ethical practices fosters a culture of accountability and transparency. 

Emphasising continuous improvement, legal and regulatory obligations can be met more efficiently through technology. Automated matter tracking and optimised document management enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and improve the overall legal function within the organisation.