Team size: 12    

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? 

We have always believed that educating clients needs to go hand in hand with servicing them. However, given the routine pressures due to workload, the legal function ended up in a transactional relationship with the businesses. While this approach is helpful to achieving commercial targets, businesses are unable to learn and retain the basics of legal issues involved in day-to-day operations. This naturally has a compounding effect on the legal department’s workload.  

To address this problem, we initiated quarterly awareness sessions which we call Pitstop Legal Talk. Every quarter, every lawyer chooses a topic to deliver a session to the business; however, the topic needs to be about a practical legal issue and its solution, not academic nor theoretical; and the sessions need to follow an Active Learning format, meaning that real life issues or the business’ challenges will be used to deliver the sessions. This approach ensures that topic remains interesting to the audience, and it ends up being an interactive session.  

These sessions are in high demand and businesses are now suggesting topical legal issues that affect them on day-to-day operations. This simple innovation around training has impacted the culture across the organisation. Both legal and business teams are keen to learn and understand from their mistakes while being educated about handling of simple legal issues. 

This has also reduced the legal department’s workload by about 15% and we see that quasi-legal tasks are being better managed at the operations level. This efficiency and cultural change were achieved at zero costs to the company.  

How do you balance your responsibilities as a GC with your involvement in dispute resolution and M&A matters? 

The bar is set quite high for any general counsel, to display good judgement, and help the organisation and its stakeholders make good decisions. This is a test I cannot fail. Everything else is a routine of function. Including balancing my involvement in M&A or in dispute resolution. 

Since I cannot be present everywhere, I delegate specific parts of my functions to my team members. This helps me decide the level of my involvement on a case-by-case basis and prioritise matters where my bigger involvement is required.  

This approach only works if I have a good and reliable legal team. Given that in my current role, I have had the opportunity to recruit and retain some of most talented lawyers from the industry, it is relatively easy for me to delegate. The only thing remaining then is how to balance my involvement despite the delegation. This is where I let the need for good judgement based on the complexity of the matter, decide for me. In my view, there is just no other methodical way to address this inevitable challenge.  

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

General counsel have been focusing on operational productivity which was an organic requirement of the role. Having said that, I am of the view that going forward, especially in the coming five years, focus will be on the general counsel to provide certain targeted leadership to the organisation.  

With the complexity of regulation framework, innovative management practices and the broadening social expectations from organisations, general counsel will be required to provide leadership on issues clearly outside legal and commercial remit. As a result, they will have to adapt and innovate their leadership style. Whether on sustainability, diversity and inclusion or ESG or other socially relevant trends, general counsel will have to provide counsel based on empathy and compassion as opposed to operating within a strict legal framework.  

This will require a change in mindset and demonstration of a mature emotional quotient. With the adoption of this approach, collaboration with other stakeholders will yield results beyond legal and commercial success and I am quite confident that this will be the path for the general counsel to be a natural successor to executive management.