In conversation with: James Ford, senior vice president and group general counsel

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at the heart of GSK Legal and Compliance’s strategy. As group general counsel, I have made public personal commitments as part of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity pledge, and commitments as part of the European General Counsel Association. The function also has four workstreams focusing our DE&I efforts, focussing on talent pipeline, third party engagement, representation and culture. The third-party engagement workstream is focussing on our request for proposal process to increase the specific weighting of the diversity measure in the selection of counsel and third parties; establishing internal ‘secondments’ for diverse external counsel to learn GSK’s legal and compliance function and our business and legal challenges to drive deeper and longer-term relationships with those individuals; and doubling current levels of spending on National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms.

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?

Technology that enables legal teams to fully leverage automation and AI are critical to the future success of legal departments by allowing in-house teams to deliver more with less through more self-help and self-service tools and greater focus on strategic, high value work. For GSK legal and compliance, one such system has been our new contract lifecycle management platform, CONGA, which is home to our global contracting templates and the gateway for legal support for contracts via our newly established legal contracting network team based in India which provides consistent, high-quality legal support to our legal customers. This new technology provides for a simplified and streamlined user experience and drives contracting efficiencies for the function and GSK. It intuitively empowers the user (contract requestor and creators) and minimises the need for training through in-the-moment, on demand learning. ServiceNow is another system that provides a unified experience between GSK employees requesting support and our Legal and Compliance teams serving them, providing a single, integrated mechanism for employees to get all the information, services, and help that they need from the department. They can submit legal/compliance related requests, monitor their progress, read articles created by subject matter experts aiming to address frequently asked questions, reducing the response times and quickly solving our customer’s needs – all through an omni-channel experience.

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

ESG performance is an important focus for GSK and is a key priority for the legal and compliance department. Our focus has been on standardising our ESG approach to reduce subjectivity and on ensuring transparency. This began with external benchmarking and a focus on the public commitments GSK has made in the ESG space. We then worked with the business to develop ambitious and achievable metrics across each commitment area. These individual metrics form the basis of an overall ESG rating, which is externally reported. The legal and compliance team supports the monitoring and data assurance of the metrics and external reporting. Sustainability and climate change is one key component of GSK’s ESG performance, with GSK setting ambitious environmental goals which include net zero impact on climate and net positive impact on nature by 2030. Supporting the many projects that underpin these commitments, including carbon renewal, renewable energy, and the sustainability of our GSK facilities, together with advising on ever increasing securities disclosure requirements in The United States and elsewhere, is a significant priority for the legal and compliance team.