Team size: 54

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values?

Currys has a significant focus on ensuring that its external law firms are aligned to and understand its corporate values for three key reasons. First, cultural alignment is the bedrock of effective inter-working between client and law firm teams. Second, external legal advice is better focused when given with knowledge of what Currys as a business stands for. Third, a law firm will in certain circumstances be a large part of the public face of the company, so how it represents the business is of fundamental importance.

In tendering for legal panels, law firms are assessed by reference to Currys’ values of putting customers first, to accordingly determine whether they are able and committed to deliver legal services to the company.

Currys is also focussed on creating a diverse and inclusive workplace within its business and its supplier base. Each law firm is required, as part of the annual review process, to provide data on their gender and ethnicity quotas. The annual review further considers the key initiatives each firm is taking to improve diversity and monitors ongoing progress towards the achievement of its diversity targets.

How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities? 

Currys is committed to operating a responsible and sustainable business which meets the demands of our colleagues, customers, investors, and society as a whole, as overseeing the ESG agenda is priority for us. The general counsel and company secretary chairs the ESG committee, which reports to the board and focuses on the delivery of a tripartite ESG strategy: firstly, reducing the group’s impact on the environment, secondly promoting circular business models through re-use, repair, and recycling and thirdly helping to eradicate digital poverty by supporting charitable organisations who bring technology to excluded groups. Failure to meet ESG commitments is one of the group’s principal risks, as this could materially impact Currys’ reputation and the propensity of customers to shop at our stores.