Team size: Approximately 50 

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in? 

The team is always very busy on a variety of complex and interesting matters. A couple of matters of note in recent weeks are the work undertaken on the Heathrow Airport charges consultation and the subsequent appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority, and dealing with the impact of the MOVEit data incident on the provider of our payroll system, Zellis. 

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years?  

I think this will be a common answer, but artificial intelligence is the obvious one. It will pose novel legal challenges that we will have to grapple with but also a number of opportunities to improve the way in which we horizon scan and the way in which we deliver our advice and work product. 

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?   

The employment law team has been busy with various innovations. They recently rolled out a newsletter for their key client areas giving insight into things like legislative developments or interesting cases that are relevant to our business. They have also transformed our previous settlement agreement process, simplifying the template and the guidance to make it quicker and easier for the HR team to use. Finally, we are making changes to our employment tribunal process to make it more efficient, transparent and to get the business more involved.  On the compliance front our Data protection team, in conjunction with the company’s cyber function, recently revamped our cyber and privacy champion networks across the business, improving knowledge and awareness on these topics throughout the company. 

As the legal landscape evolves, what steps are you taking to foster a culture of continuous learning and development within the legal team, ensuring that they are all well-equipped to address future legal complexities?  

Continuous learning and development are extremely important in such a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment. We have recently reinstated lunch and learn sessions once a month where we have a speaker come and deliver a skillbyte session for the team over a sandwich. This could be a technical legal issue, understanding an area of the business better or an external perspective.