About

Since 2011, Lisa Lagerwall has presided over the general counsel role of Sweco, the Nasdaq Stockholm listed leading engineering and architecture consultancy with approximately 14,500 employees across 14 countries and SEK16.9bn in annual sales. Describing her position within the company, Lagerwall says: ‘I head the legal team consisting of 30 corporate counsels in the Group. Four of these corporate counsels and one assistant is reporting directly to me. In addition to this the [legal heads] of Sweco’s seven business areas have a dotted reporting line to me. My function is responsible for legal matters, risk and compliance as well as insurance’. As well as this all-encompassing remit, in which Lagerwall reports directly to the company’s CEO, she is a member of Sweco’s executive team, corporate secretary to the board and is a member of the board of several Sweco subsidiaries, including Sweco of Denmark. Speaking to external factors impacting her work, Lagerwall and Sweco as a whole have been affected by ‘quick and intense’ consolidation within the market, as companies in the industry are ‘constantly’ seeking other companies to acquire. Sweco itself has acquired over 100 companies in the last decade, and M&A is a ‘daily part’ of Lagerwall’s work. Amidst this fast-paced and competitive environment, where ‘organic growth is difficult [and] successful companies need to ensure profitable growth also through acquisitions’, Lagerwall has had to ensure that a combination of the right advisors, experienced sellers and ‘the right and adequate process, follow up and terms which are in line with the risks that the company is prepared to take’ are all in place. A product of these acquisitions has seen Sweco grow extensively, both in geographical terms on the number of its employees, and as a result the legal team itself has also grown to match its new size. Lagerwall explains that the number of corporate counsels per employee in the UK business and Netherlands business is ‘at a higher rate than the corresponding number in the Nordics’ owing to various new business conditions. Lagerwall has overseen a change in the way interaction with group legal takes places in new jurisdiction, as Sweco acquired a major competitor based in the Netherlands in 2015 and the number of corporate counsels in the Group ‘more than doubled, introducing a dotted line between the heads of legal in the countries and myself’. Ensuring involvement in these issues, Lagerwall has ‘regular meetings, [where] they report on major developments and we discuss various issues’, whilst she has also ‘provided possibilities and encouraged the corporate counsels to interact with each other [on a] cross border [basis] as there is so much experience and best practice to learn from each other’. When asked what advice she would give her peers, she states it would be to ‘understand the strategy of the company you are supporting, the actions connected thereto and what drives these actions, to obtain the trust of management, as well as the business being all the people contacting you. The corporate counsel is part of creating the culture of a business contributing with the long term perspective [and] to have an impact you have to be able to address issues in a proactive manner to the business in a way which reaches the whole organisation and not only a few. You have to understand how the organisation works, whom you should turn to, when and how to provide talks/training sessions, when and how to implement policies in a way that is understood and accepted by the various parts of the business’.