Team size:  six

Key team members:  David Cox (general counsel), Kirsty D’Silva (senior legal counsel), Sam Al-Ani (legal counsel), Brian Reddy (legal counsel), Charlotte Hornshaw (trainee solicitor), Lilly Pilendiram (paralegal)

What significant projects or deals has the legal team worked on in the past year?  Can you provide examples of successful outcomes or major accomplishments?  

The Rightmove legal team works at the intersection of technology, property, business and the law, providing comprehensive legal counsel and advice across the entire company. We cover not only the main property listings service, but also tenant referencing, mortgages, the advertising of property-related products and services, tenant reviews and dealing in the property-related data held by Rightmove. In particular in the last year, our breadth of work has included the following significant projects: engaging with outside regulators and government departments; the implementation of our Brand Protection Strategy; negotiating terms on a strategic investment in Coadjute – one of our ‘start up’ partners; working on high value contracts concerning our data; completing the acquisition of Homeviews, worth £8m; facilitating Rightmove’s sponsorship of ITV’s Saturday Night Takeaway; entering into an advertising partnership with Sky; entering into partnerships with our new creative agency and media agency respectively, representing a significant investment in marketing in line with our company goals. The variety of our coverage is as unique as the business we work in.

How does the legal team collaborate with other departments within the company? 

As we are a relatively young legal team, our early focus was reinforcing the message to the business that we are here to facilitate, not block, their commercial goals. We emphasise our support of the delivery of innovative solutions for our clients, stakeholders and the communities we serve, whilst protecting and advancing our shareholder value, employing the use of AI to support more efficiently. We have carefully curated relationships across the business based on the principle that wherever possible we will collaborate with them to achieve the best possible results in a compliant and low risk way, and we have built trust from those departments in our judgement and advice. We often offer training on new developments within our industry, prepare courses of action for issues, and Q&A sessions in which we provide advice on topics of their choosing. We have successfully remained available to the business by keeping lines of communication to the legal team open for all departments, and more importantly, team members within those departments of all levels.

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos in one sentence, with an explanation?  

The Rightmove legal team culture is centered around collaboration and opportunity for all, and we have implemented a flat structure wherever possible to enable team members to challenge themselves and grow through opportunities that they may not have received elsewhere. This culture was initially borne out of necessity; despite being a FTSE100 company, the business has only had an in-house legal team for less than four years. With only six team members, we are still considerably more lean than legal teams in other FTSE100 companies. This has afforded us the opportunity to take ownership of significant projects and demonstrate our capabilities, leading to resounding success for both the team and the business. We now challenge ourselves to involve team members of all levels in projects of all sizes, value and complexity, and have reaped the benefits of this collaboration and the invaluable ideas that all our talented team bring to the table.