About

Team size: 75
Major law firms used: Eversheds Sutherland, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Hogan Lovells, Whitecap Legal

‘I’m extremely passionate about being an in-house lawyer, and I’m all for being very commercial and not forgetting why we’re around,’ comments Mel Rowlands, group GC at Smiths Group. Rowlands is an experienced in-house lawyer – she worked for British Gas and vacuum-engineering company Edwards before joining Smiths over five years ago. The well-regarded GC is described by Roger Barron, partner at Paul Hastings, as ‘a great lawyer but also tough when she needs to be’ and a ‘superb’ manager to her legal team.

Smiths operates in more than 50 countries in an array of markets, including medical technology, security devices, oil and gas, and the space and aerospace sectors. As such, Rowlands heads up a sizeable legal and compliance function within the company and an international team of 75 lawyers spanning the UK, Germany and Dubai.

Rowlands restructured the legal department when she became GC in early 2018 in a bid to encourage her team to ‘think more about business ideas rather than in legal terms’. Five ‘customer-focused’ GCs reporting to Rowlands are supported by several other GCs who provide strategic input to the business across litigation, M&A and technology.

It has already been a busy 2019 as the team has been working on separating the Smiths Group from its Smiths Medical division as part of plans to focus more on the industrial technology side of its business. Last year, Smiths bolstered its aerospace and industrial services by buying engineering solutions provider United Flexible for $345m.

‘We’ve had a strategy of growing the business over the last few years, with lots of re-reshaping through M&A. We are in the throes of separating off from Smiths Medical and integrating United Flexible, so it’s delivering business as usual while also preparing the necessary regulatory compliance for these projects.’

Rowlands is on a mission to reduce the number of law firms the business uses, which in the past has stood at as many as 360 firms due to Smiths’ size, complexity and international spread. Going forward, she wants the company to engage with law firms that are also strategic partners to the business. ‘We started with an M&A panel to get down from 25 to five, so we’re a lot closer to our target.’