Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

I have been lucky to have so much interesting and challenging work during my time at Nine, which has grown from a television broadcaster to become Australia’s largest media company. Some of my favourites are:

Assisting with the US$4bn merger with Fairfax Media (with publishes the mastheads Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age) and the acquisition of Macquarie Media (a radio broadcaster), which means that Nine is now Australia’s largest media company with assets spanning television, print, digital and radio.

As a result of the government introducing laws (the News Media Bargaining Code) which were established to remunerate news companies by social media platforms for using and monetising their news content – a world first. Prior to the introduction of these laws, news organisations were not able to negotiate with social media platforms for payment for content. I was part of the team negotiating the content supply deal with Facebook.

I also played a significant role in a joint venture with Discovery (now Warner Bros Discovery) for our free-to-air television channel, 9Rush.

I have overall responsibility for content acquisition from Hollywood Studios and major distributors.

In your opinion, what are the qualities and skills needed to form a strong legal team?

Great in-house lawyers will have a deep understanding of their business, key relationships, commercial drivers, and strategic considerations. As most teams have been increasingly ‘doing more with less,’ they will utilise whatever resources and technology are available to them effectively and direct their effort and priorities to matters which have the most impact. They will be problem solvers with an ability to reach compromise and produce creative solutions. As we all work in complex environments and in challenging commercial and regulatory environments. More specifically though, their solutions should be practical and enable the business to take calculated risks.

I also think a strong legal team will be diverse in multiple dimensions, including socio-economic background and life experience. Some of my colleagues are on their second careers or have grown up in regional areas – this brings a richness of different experiences and approaches which not only provides the business with better results, but it is a more interesting and fun team to work with!

What is the biggest risk to your industry or organisation and how are you contributing to prepare your organisation for this?

There is no doubt that the media landscape is rapidly changing, and these changes are accelerating. For content, how it is distributed and how it is consumed have undergone tremendous changes and, as lawyers, it has been critical to keep abreast of market changes and continually work to build these changes into our contracts. On the flipside, there are huge opportunities working for Australia’s largest media company – for example, we have seen our content used on multiple platforms, originating from long form news reporting in our newspaper mastheads, to development as a podcast and potentially adaptation as a television series or even a feature film! The possibilities are endless, and it is incredibly exciting to be a part of it.