About

Ruth Murphy, legal director of BT’s In-Life and Product business, supports businesses and public sector organisations across Ireland and the UK to deliver on their digital transformation agendas. She leads a team of lawyers that provide strategic, risk savvy, customer-centric advice on commercial and strategic matters and product launches. Murphy has been a major part of the in-house legal department’s development in Ireland in the last 15 years, having joined in 2004 after a spell in private practice with Eversheds and Binchys Solicitors from 1999. As Murphy returns to the GC Powerlist: Ireland, she continues to demonstrate the leadership and legal acumen deserving of recognition, and continues to drive forward the in-house team in terms of diversity and inclusion, and technology. She highlights that BT uses a legal process outsourcer for some of its “playbook-able” volume legal activity, and uses a contract management tool to track inlife obligations, a search tool for trawling high volumes of contracts and e-discovery tools. She says that ‘anything that takes non-complex, rules-based work out of the busy core internal team of talented lawyers is a positive, and we’re constantly trialling and challenging ourselves to use more. We’re no different to every other part of the business, doing more with less people and rightly expected to improve efficiency and effectiveness year on year’. BT provides services to business, wholesale and consumer customers, operates in over 100 countries and has services ranging from traditional voice, broadband, complex IT outsource solutions, data centre services to TV content. Given this scale and diversity, Murphy identifies that the legal team runs an internal Horizon-Scanning process, which constantly scans for upcoming changes in laws and regulations, ensuring it is ready for compliance and has engaged at the right time with impacted business stakeholders. Asked about which “soft skills” she feels are most important for an in-house lawyer to possess, Murphy illustrates that ‘a positive attitude is everything, you can “teach” anyone a new technical skill, but you can’t teach attitude. When hiring I look for diversity of thought and understanding, and always look for people that are better than me and stretch them. I need people who are not just brilliant lawyers, but are passionate about culture, brands, people and business. We have challenging roles, so resilience is critical, someone who keeps getting back up and can lift the team and not give up. I also look for curiosity in a lawyer, someone who will want to roll their sleeves up, not work in a silo, be part of a business, who will think of the best questions and come up with creative solutions to facilitate good business and a great customer experience’.