Everyone has a view on BT, which veteran legal chief Chris Fowler believes has one of the most complicated stakeholder environments he has ever worked in. ‘You’ve got shareholders, customers, suppliers, regulators, governments and agencies around the world and they all have multiple demands and considerations: you could be dealing with government, but it’s also a significant customer, as well as a policymaker. It’s pretty complex.’ Fowler, BT’s technology, service and operations GC, who doubles as the in-house arm’s chief operating officer (COO), contends the highprofile nature of this environment, mixed with the vast array of issues it raises, is behind the strength of the well-regarded legal function. The team has a budget of about £70m, of which about a third is spent externally. It was already considered a trailblazer as one of the first in-house legal teams to obtain an alternative business structure licence, and for launching its successful legal process outsourcing venture. In early 2017, BT reached an agreement with regulator Ofcom to separate its network division Openreach into a distinct business. It also completed the acquisition of EE for £12.5bn in early 2016, with consumer division GC Russell Johnstone earning praise for managing the newly-combined teams, along with a 2017 deal with Sky to sell channels on each other’s platforms. Not to mention the 18,500 claims the litigation team in Sheffield has dealt with over the past year – earning revenue for BT from third parties. For the legal function it has been a significant year of change internally. The company appointed former Anheuser-Busch InBev legal chief Sabine Chalmers its GC, effective April, following the announcement that Dan Fitz – one of the in-house legal market’s most influential and admired GCs – was stepping down after seven years. Fitz will remain on BT’s executive committee as company secretary, while the broader legal, governance and compliance teams have been brought under a common reporting structure with a single budget. ‘We’ve become more aware of the need to manage legal on an end-to-end basis,’ says Fowler. ‘As a legal team we will deliver a revenue stream of £14m this year as well as manage an overall cost base. We can run that more effectively from a single place, held accountable for delivering an overall EBITDA outcome.’ BT continues to use alternative suppliers, such as Elevate, Axiom, Halebury, NewGalexy Services and Obelisk Support, and has launched a number of technology initiatives, such as legal projectmanagement software, document management and an internallydeveloped software tool for the wider business to seek automated regulatory advice on complex global transactions. A counsel management team tasked with ensuring external matters are scoped and instructed on consistently has saved more than £1.3m. For example, sales teams now use an automated process to make a legally-vetted offer on the spot. On his COO role, which he picked up last July, Fowler says: ‘We’ve got a disbursed cost base, so a big part of the role is trying to get your arms around that, establishing a credible baseline and providing management information that allows the leadership team to make more educated decisions and plan for the future. When you oversee the entirety of the legal, governance and compliance function, apart from the group GC, the COO gets as much, if not more, insight into what’s happening across the team.’