Team size: Over 60 

Key team members: Helen Barraclough, Group General Counsel and Company Secretary; Mark Gorman, Associate General Counsel Intellectual Property, Clinical and Regulatory and Quality Affairs; Elizabeth Mitchell, Associate General Counsel, Global Litigation, Investigations and Employment; Andy Radford, Associate General Counsel, Corporate, M&A and International Orthopedics; Alan Boys, VP Asia Pacific and International Sports Medicine; Kathryn Morgans, Senior Director Global Commercial, Operations and International Advanced Wound Management  

Spotlight: Our legal team 

The S+N Legal team is consistently recognised by internal and external stakeholders for their dedication, expertise and innovative solution-focused approach. The mission of the S+N Legal team is closely aligned to the Company’s Purpose of Life Unlimited, its strategic objectives and its culture pillars of Care, Collaboration and Courage:  

Care: Providing high quality advice and support on time and within budget to facilitate achievement of the company’s strategic priorities and objectives. The legal function takes a strategic advisory role, contributing to key business initiatives and advising senior management on legal and regulatory implications of strategic decisions. The team’s proactive involvement has helped to drive value creation by focusing on execution, accelerating growth and transforming the company through innovation and acquisition. Through proactive negotiation and effective management of legal resources and implementation of our external counsel guidelines, our team has consistently demonstrated a positive trajectory in spend reduction on external legal fees.   

Collaboration: The S+N legal team works closely with other departments, including Finance, Tax, HR and Operations, to provide integrated legal support to the global organisation.  We partner with the business and functions to deliver on commitments within a performance-based culture and this collaborative approach ensures that legal considerations are seamlessly integrated into business decisions, enhancing overall organisational effectiveness.  

Courage: Being the best stewards for the business, defending and protecting the company and ensuring we act with integrity and credibility. We contribute to a robust legal risk management framework which has enabled the company to proactively identify and mitigate potential legal risks, thereby safeguarding the company’s interests. 

The last 12 months have been busy for the Legal team at Smith+Nephew, supporting on the restructuring of the organisation’s operations to a global business unit operating model, the $330m acquisition of Cartiheal and several other network optimisation projects across the global organisation. The team also supported a US$1bn public bond issuance which included the participation of two specialist D&I active co-managers in the book building process, selected through their alignment with S+N’s purpose and culture pillars. The Legal team played a pivotal role and managed key aspects of these transactions, from due diligence to contract negotiations, ensuring a smooth and efficient process.  

Smith+Nephew’s intellectual property team manages an IP portfolio that includes approximately 13,000 patent and trademark matters around the globe and focuses its efforts on capturing intellectual property rights to support and protect S+N’s innovative product offerings.  The team ethos of “no surprises” is accomplished through close collaboration with the R&D team to ensure S+N’s New Product Development process includes the identification and mitigation of IP risks across S+N’s products spanning the Orthopaedic, Sports Medicine, ENT and Advanced Wound Management businesses.    

Our proactive strategic approach to dispute resolution also adds value to the organisation by managing potential claims in-house and resolving matters without formal litigation where appropriate to achieve a strong outcome for the organisation reducing the need to expend resource on external counsel.  

Embracing technology, our team continues to support in identifying low code and no code solutions for contract management and approval processes, reducing turnaround times and simplifying approval processes. These initiatives have not only improved efficiency but also supported standardisation and a sharper focus on commercial execution in line with the organisation’s twelve-point plan. 

Our team culture continues to focus on development of skillsets and key competencies required to support the global business in an environment of increasing technological development and regulation. The team also regularly reviews succession planning and internal talent pipeline development through customised development plans, mentorship and coaching opportunities. Strong team engagement was most recently evidenced by the 2024 Legal Team Gallup score which was in the 86th percentile as benchmarked against other organisations within the Gallup database.