About

Team size: 500
Major law firms used: Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, Linklaters

‘Everything is just getting faster,’ says Unilever chief legal officer and group secretary Ritva Sotamaa. ‘The digitisation agenda is changing the environment of the consumer goods industry. We as a legal team need to make sure we keep pace.’

Easier said than done for the 500-strong in-house legal team Sotamaa has led since 2013, with Unilever owning more than 400 brands sold across 170 countries. The global consumer goods giant recorded full-year sales of £44bn in 2018. In February 2019, it announced that it had purchased healthy snack brand graze from The Carlyle Group (see graze profile, p81).

In a bid to keep pace, Sotamaa has lawyers across 55 countries and introduced a legal operations leader when she first joined to improve efficiency. But that has been taken to another level, she says, with the appointment of a GC of people and skills at the start of this year. That role was internally filled with a senior appointment: former GC for UK and Ireland, James Barnes.

‘The role is to ensure that we focus and put the emphasis on the development of our talent and our learning agenda, and make sure we unleash the potential of our people. One of the toughest things is always change management and how you create an environment that engages people.’

This saw the launch of a flexible experience platform, which allows anyone from the legal team to allocate up to 20% of their time to global projects. Lawyers can apply for any project irrespective of their location, which Sotamaa says has been very well received. It helps particularly in countries where the legal teams are small and career development opportunities are rare. The legal function also has a technology roadmap programme called Future First. An initiative dubbed Smarter Contracting has seen work in more than 60 countries shifted to alternative providers over the last year or so, with Unilever using outsourcing partners in India and Latin America extensively.

‘It’s been a big differentiator for our lawyers to be able to shift their attention and time to topics that move the needle more. You need to think like it’s your own company, you need to take ownership and be a business player as much as anyone else. That type of mindset where you take that accountability and responsibility is getting more critical.’