About

Team size: 500
Major law firms used: Hogan Lovells, Linklaters, Norton Rose Fulbright, Osborne Clarke, Slaughter and May, Squire Patton Boggs, Wiggin

A long-standing ambassador for the in-house legal profession, Rosemary Martin, GC of Vodafone, is as well-versed on innovation and new ideas as anyone. As an example, Martin sits on the Disclosure Working Group, a body made up of GCs, the judiciary and private practice lawyers committed to tackling the burdensome disclosure exercise currently present in high-value litigation.

While a significant proportion of any overhaul of the disclosure process will rest on changing behaviours, Martin is typically enthusiastic about the role technology can play: ‘The idea you can predict the outcome of a dispute is fabulous. I’m looking forward to that technology being more widely available. It should change people’s behaviour and make it less likely that cases end up in court. We have to do something to help make the process of disclosure in litigation less time consuming than it is.’

A major preoccupation during 2018 was figuring out how to make Vodafone an even more attractive place for junior lawyers to work. An overhaul of the company’s flexible working policy to make Vodafone ‘more like a tech company’ has been part of it, but Martin has also considered how the in-house environment compares with private practice in terms of appeal. ‘I don’t think one model is necessarily better than the other. It’s more about the culture of the place you are working at. I recently met two lawyers who just joined us in South Africa and they said they were struggling to understand how they added value to the business. In a law firm, all you have to do is put in a client name and the amount of hours. The metric is very simple. In-house, you don’t have that metric.’

She uses a simple mantra to explain her successful career and it revolves around being a facilitator rather than a blocker: ‘Just say yes. Just say yes, then work out how to do it later.’