About

Team size: 360
Major law firms used:Allen & Overy, DLA Piper, Latham & Watkins, Linklaters, Pinsent Masons, Slaughter and May

People have been on Aviva group GC and company secretary Kirsty Cooper’s mind this past year. The in-house legal department, which has grown to 360 staff as public policy and corporate responsibility came under Cooper’s remit, has already had a legal leadership development programme for several years, training lawyers to be senior business managers and not just legal advisers.

But in the past year, Cooper has expanded professional development initiatives further, with the launch of a training programme it called ‘Missions’. This sees small teams of six to eight people given a business problem to solve over eight weeks before presenting back to the legal leadership team. Lawyers get support from other people within the business on the projects, while Aviva also sponsors anyone in the function who wants to undertake an MBA – three have done so already, with a further three set to be sponsored.

The idea is to get Cooper’s lawyers thinking more like business people. She comments: ‘Missions has worked extremely well. It can be anything from a business problem – how do we cut through and provide a greater customer journey on a particular product – to whether there are particular issues we should be concerned about in terms of vulnerable customers – to a legal operational issue around automation and simplification.’

The broader Aviva group restructured in 2017, merging the UK life and general insurance businesses. This saw Cooper cut her direct reports from 12 to seven, while a head of legal operations, Caroline Brown, was brought in from Chubb in June 2018. Cooper says this is about bringing rigour to the split between external and internal legal spend, as well as the use of technology and data.

‘We’re streamlining the relationship and protocols with our external panel and improving our management information to understand at a granular level where we’re spending money. Everyone is focused on the bottom line and wants to make sure we are getting a quality service and value for money. It’s not about headcount in legal, it’s about overall value and cost.’