Team size: Four

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

In conjunction with the finance team, we led a R400m transaction merging two legal entities in South Africa, with shareholding sitting in Amsterdam and the UK. This was a three-fold transaction, comprising a due diligence that needed to be done upfront; transfer of over 200 trademarks across 15 different regions; and a complex commercial transaction that required transfer transactions to all be done in one day, across three different countries in order to comply with various tax provisions. That meant we needed to have a team of lawyers, bankers and notaries in South Africa, Amsterdam, and London, all ready to act once the previous market had completed. Each leg had to also get South African Reserve bank approval.

Since taking on the role, my team and I moved from a reckless, litigious mindset to carefully considered litigation and balancing risk versus reward, resulting in a recouperation of over R20m in the last year for Reckitt South Africa from long outstanding litigation.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in South Africa over the next five-ten years?

The role of general counsel is moving from a purely legal advisory role to that of a legal strategic partner.

Over the next five to ten years, I think general counsel will be heavily leaned on to comment on critical strategic transactions and to do so, need to be multi-faceted to understand changing laws and regulations across various jurisdictions and industries, and be able to provide feedback with precision and speed. Given the advancements of technology, there will not be a need to spend as much time as present on aspects like contract drafting and vetting, with a truly proficient general counsel being able to master the various software available to optimise their time.

They will also be expected to get more involved in the running of the business, and as such, focus will be on aspects such as sustainability and ESG initiatives, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) programmes, leadership skills and talent development. This will require them to look for innovative ways to combine the law with the strategic priorities of the business and its initiatives. This will see a stronger relationship being built between the general counsel and many key stakeholders such as CEOs and HR teams, which cements their C-Suite position, or shows the importance of the general counsel’s involvement in critical business meetings.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

In the long run, I believe those who view AI as an opportunity will be positively impacted, as it will start to free up time for in-house lawyers to focus more on high-importance tasks whilst leaving the “simple” tasks such as basic drafting or research, to AI software.

As part of a major due diligence this year, we utilised software to upload numerous contracts into a programme which then ran a search and pulled out all relevant clauses that needed reviewing, particularly around assignment, breach and change of power. As we were merging two legal entities, there were approximately 380 contracts to go through and this would have been a mammoth task. However, by using the software, the team was able to pinpoint the clauses, skim to check relevance and move onto the next. As a company that often acquires brands and needing to constantly perform due diligence, this has been a gamechanger.