About

As acting global general counsel, Marlene Connolly played a pivotal role in Websense’s billion-dollar merger with Raytheon Cyber Products completed in 2015. Connolly previously established the cyber defence leader’s Irish legal team, which now works alongside its US counterpart. The core of her success, Connolly maintains, always comes down to people. ‘Recruiting the right talent is key’, she says. ‘And to me, the team “fit” and individual positive attitude is more important than any knowledge or experience gaps that might exist and can be bridged’. Throughout her time as general counsel, Connolly has promoted integration, training and knowledge-sharing, not only within different pockets of legal, but across the business as a whole. As a lean function supporting 1,500 employees across over 45 countries, this approach is pivotal to its effectiveness. ‘Uniting two geographically dispersed and culturally diverse legal teams is sometimes a challenge’, Connolly says. Her “cross-pollinisation” program ensures members of the Ireland and US teams take it in turns to spend a week in the other office and see different ways of doing things. She has also implemented comprehensive training for the company’s global sales force. ‘I believe it’s key to empower the salesforce with an awareness of legal issues so that they can get their deals done quickly, smoothly and cleanly’, she says. On the flipside, she has worked to build up an understanding of what legal can do to be more accessible to the internal client. In a broader effort to improve cross-functional communication, she also established and currently chairs the International Structures Group (ISG), including US and international representation across finance, HR, tax and legal. ‘Almost any project we undertake – like establishing a new entity in a country – cuts across all of these departments’, she explains. ‘Unless the left hand knows what the right hand is doing and in what priority, things can get unstuck’. When it comes to external counsel, Connolly values pragmatism and an understanding of the client’s business, and believes in building long-term relationships with the right firms. ‘If and when something unexpected turns up – litigation or time-sensitive M&A activity – you know that that firm “has your back” and will “go the extra mile”’. At the same time, she stresses that it is a two-way relationship. ‘We pay our external legal invoices very promptly and rarely query them and our professional respect for our external firms has been reciprocated in the service received’.