A recurring theme among leading in-house legal teams is the ability to not just provide technical legal advice, but to supplement it with business nous. This is the philosophy Penny Dudley, Bupa’s chief legal officer since early 2016, tries to instil in her team of more than 150 working across 13 countries. ‘The legal function operates as an integral part of Bupa; we try not to have this separation between the business and legal,’ she says. ‘While we can obviously recruit people with significant technical ability, it’s interpersonal skills, business knowledge and management influencing that make a difference.’ The international healthcare company employs more than 78,000 people – a quarter of whom are in the UK – and mostly focuses on health insurance, as well as healthcare provision. The group’s earnings are about £12.2bn, with key operations in Australia, Spain, Chile, Poland, Hong Kong, Brazil, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, India and the US. As such, the legal team at Bupa was involved in a significant number of deals during 2017: completing the acquisition of Oasis Dental Care in the UK for £835m, as well as the sale of 110 care homes to HC-One for £300m. Dudley’s team also worked as part of the core team on a data incident affecting its insurance business in mid-2017 when an employee inappropriately copied and removed customer information from the company, affecting about 108,000 insurance policies. She says technology plays two roles for the in-house team and wider company: first, changing how it interacts with its customers, and second, allowing the legal function to be more effective. Bupa’s focus on digitising the customer experience raises a number of issues that legal contributes to, but the team also tries to make use of technology to connect seamlessly across its different jurisdictions. Senior legal adviser Angelique de Lafontaine is highlighted for her contribution to the new innovation hub, working on a number of projects, as well as developing strategic partnerships in innovation. The team is also trialling DocuSign, but Dudley admits: ‘We’re still at an early stage of where I’d like us to get to as a digital function.’ Bupa’s in-house function introduced a legal operations manager in 2016, bringing in Rachel Kerr from PwC. Dudley says the role was created after recognising the demands of the function had increased to a point where someone who had operations skills would be beneficial. The team stresses the importance of being able to work in an agile way and that, where possible, the internal team leads on the bigger and more complex projects, rather than outsourcing it to external counsel. ‘Legal departments spread across multiple jurisdictions means there are many jobs and tasks where an effective operations manager will be able to connect people, helping to bring the legal team together as one.’