Legal Leaders Europe 2023 Q&A
Ahead of Reuters Events: Legal Leaders Europe 2023 (7 – 8 September, London) we caught up with a few of the speakers to share their greatest achievements, make predictions, and divulge a few of their top tips to help you elevate your role beyond law.

Robin Fisher, General Counsel – EMEA, Randstad

What career advice would you give to your younger self?

  • Firstly, take control of your own career. Nobody knows what you want more than you do so take the time to sit down with your manager and have the important conversations about where you want to go, what you can do to get there and what support you need. Asking for help is not something to be worried about. Also, say yes to interesting things. I ran the risk and audit team for four years and that gave me incredible insight into how the business works and it made me a better lawyer when I came back to a traditional legal role.
How are you ensuring your team has commercial awareness and can help make decisions about the strategic direction of the company?

  • There are two key factors. The first is a broad understanding of what the current strategic and financial goals are e.g. are we driven by revenue growth or are we looking to stabilise and drive profitability? That knowledge frames the advice that is given on a day-to-day basis. The second is making the time for stakeholder management. I find a good question to ask is "what is your biggest worry about the business?". Not necessarily legal risk but what might stop us achieving our goals.
What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • Any misconception is generally because legal doesn't do a good job of communicating what it does. My colleagues might say that legal "does contracts". I say we solve problems for a living. A contract review is one type of problem to be solved - maybe it can't be signed for policy reasons - solving that problem involves negotiation. Other problems are much more complex and can involve cultural, jurisdictional and moral issues. Lawyers tend to like problems and have the skills to solve them
Jamie Pearson, Assistant General Counsel, Head of Commercial Legal Europe and International, ViiV Healthcare

How do you predict technology will transform how legal departments operate and deliver services in the next 3 years?

  • The novelty and fear of AI will dissipate, as we slowly realise that it’s next step after googling something (and take appropriate precautions and carry on doing our jobs in pretty much the current way). We will be amused/horrified observers of the few crazy workplaces that try to completely replace legal advice given by humans with legal advice given by AI
What career advice would you give to your younger self?

  • Stop worrying about whether you’re doing a good job or not (you are – as are most lawyers), and properly devote some time to working out what you want to do next. And stop building pyramids of coke cans on your desk
What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • That (in-house) legal roles aren’t exciting – this is nonsense. In life sciences, they can be super interesting and an absolute rollercoaster – loads of opportunities to show how useful lawyers can be

Roel Staes, Senior Vice President Legal, General Counsel Europe, FedEx Express

What has been your greatest achievement in your current role so far?

  • Several years ago we acquired one of our European competitors. The acquired company’s operations in Europe were much bigger than ours.  Its legal function, however, was in a much less mature state.  It was decentralized, reported into local country management, did not have the same standing internally and was much smaller in terms of staffing and budget.  The task I was given was to integrate the acquired legal team into the FedEx legal functional reporting model.  The integration mantra was that we could not compromise on our compliance standards but also not add any costs in the acquired business.  These apparently conflicting objectives required us to rethink the way we had been delivering legal support in our own organization.  Simply replicating our model would have required us to more than double our staffing and that was simply not an option.   After several years of hard work, we now have a fully integrated mature legal team in Europe where you can no longer see who came in through the acquisition.   The entire team performs to the FedEx compliance standards and we have not added additional cost in the process.
What are the top 3 external influences impacting Legal right now?

  • The first I would mention is technology.  The current technology advancements provide huge opportunities to become more efficient. By that, I do not mean AI, which has become a real buzz word.  I speak to a lot of GCs and the technology requirements of most legal departments are much more basic than that.  A functioning and fully integrated CLM-system, for example, is still missing in most big companies I know.    The other big moving part for me is the international geo-political situation.   We are moving from a bi-polar, predictable world to a multi-polar environment  where developing countries increasingly want to play their part.  We are moving from globalization to protectionism, and a world where countries become much more inward looking.  This change follows years of free trade and globalization.  This means that the regulatory environment becomes much more complex to manage.  Think about the IRA in the US, CBAM in Europe and the increase in sanctions and export control regulations we have to manage through as multinational companies.  Finally, I would say that the skills sets of our in-house lawyers need to evolve because of the speed with which information flows.  Technical expertise continues to be important, but communication becomes an increasingly important part of any of our jobs.   In-house lawyers need to be able to tell stories that are compelling if they want to have any chance of influencing the corporate agendas.
What is your department doing to attract fresh talent?

  • I remember early in my career my boss told me one day I was promoted and entitled to a company car.  I was over the moon because that felt like success to me.  These traditional job value drivers have changed.  Obviously, pay still needs to be fair and competitive but job candidates will now look for other differentiators.  Talent is increasingly concerned about the reputation and ESG track record of their future employers.  They want to be proud to be associated with a particular brand.  They want to know what the company does on diversity and sustainability, for example.  On the latter, candidates will now ask in interviews what the company actually does, rather than what it says it is doing.  They are interested in whether we offer remote or hybrid working options and what our views are on work life balance.   So the task is really to work on all of those things to make the employee experience as compelling as possible.  
Saffron Gilbert-Kaluba, CEO and Co-Founder, The Corporate Law Journal

What has been your greatest achievement in your current role so far?

  • My greatest achievement is expanding my team, as CEO and Co-Founder at The Corporate Law Journal, to over 40 people and being able to bring more light to the legal sector - especially in business. The Corporate Law Journal is a platform that specifically looks at the legal shifts in the changing world of business - with exclusives from leading professionals. We have a presence in 101 countries and have worked with over 100 companies. In addition to this, The Corporate Law Journal has recently been featured by Forbes in its ‘Forbes 30 under 30’ list, amongst some of the world’s most innovative and fastest growing companies.  Founding The Corporate Law Journal has allowed me to be appointed as a Secretariat Representative for The All Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship, through The Entrepreneurs Network. I usually visit the House of Lords or the House of Commons once a month to collaborate with Government ministers, members of the House of Lords and their representatives, offering recommendations on British growth and innovation. Generally, I like to look at how the sectors of law and business can collide, therefore we mainly hold roundtables with government ministers for the Department for Business and Trade. For example, I worked with the UK Government Minister for Women, Maria Caulfield and Baroness Jenkin on the Female Founders Report ‘One in A Million’ in 2022, which we released in the UK House of Lords. In the Female Founders Report I mainly gave my suggestions of how to improve the workplace for women in the intersection of law and business (e.g. legal departments of businesses).Further to this, serving on the Inclusive Innovation Forum Board of Morgan Stanley, means that I can focus on minority founders whereas in my role on the Barclays Female Founders Forum, I support female entrepreneurship. As a guest lecturer at Durham Business School I have lectured executives from prominent companies such as Boeing, AerData B.V., and Jeppesen, on the importance of company compliance. Similarly, as a Guest Fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering, I help in advising its fellows within the ‘Leaders in Innovation Fellowship’ program on the importance of regulation and compliance when commercialising their inventions. Therefore, I would say that these opportunities, where I have been able to bring more light to the legal sector - especially in business, all amalgamate to my greatest achievement in my current role.
How do you predict technology will transform how legal departments operate and deliver services in the next 3 years?

  • Legal technologies which provide regulatory expertise. For example, technologies which synthesise industry and commercial intelligence, to give a pragmatic understanding of regulatory shifts to assist organisations in successfully delivering their corporate strategies. Regulation is a key determinator of the strategic agenda for companies and firms. Evolving consumer demands and behaviours, the need for financial stability and operational resilience, challenging economic conditions and environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are shaping the global regulatory framework. 
  • That is why I predict technology will transform how legal departments operate and deliver services in the next three years through managing and anticipating developments in a single solution. This will eliminate the burden and costs of having to manually track multiple sources of regulatory information. Thus, allowing legal departments to make even more pragmatic decisions when it comes to compliance and reducing costs, time and labour for legal departments.
What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today

  • The number one misconception about the legal function in business today is that it is only capable of solving the specialist legal problems for their company/organisation. However, if utilised correctly, legal functions can help drive a company’s corporate strategy for the better. For example, the global real estate industry is worth $326.5 trillion as growth has been insanely driven by residential real estate demand. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of real estate is expected to expand by 5.2% from 2022 to 2030. The billionaire developer Charles Cohen, who has a real estate empire of millions of square feet of office space across the USA, is positive about the future of real estate. This is despite corporate real estate seeing a financial downturn and uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of working from home - a framework that has persisted for at least 40% of the UK working population. At the end of May 2023, Cohen declared that, in real estate, to survive and thrive for the many new opportunities “you’ve got to be very defensive.” Having a defensive strategy in real estate firstly means making sure that your legal function is not only dealing with your company’s general legal matters. It also means having the legal function of a company drive its corporate strategy in how to best protect and invest in further assets, utilising law to make more savvy business decisions. Moreover, in a literal sense, companies such as Microsoft are even implementing their legal functions to build products to put on the market with software such as Microsoft Copilot which recently partnered with Thomson Reuters. Therefore, it is a huge misconception to relegate the legal function in business to solely a legal in-house purpose, when legal functions can deliver innovative corporate strategies and drive overall business.

Jussi Koskinen, Chief Legal Officer, Nordea

What has been your greatest achievement in your current role so far?

  • Bringing the inhouse function to the front line, straight to the decision-making tables as a strategic partner and contributor to the business. Every Business Area General Counsel has a Leadership team position in the respective Business Area.
What is your department doing to attract fresh talent?

  • All leaders in the legal department need to be active outside the company. Social media, seminars, publications, external training etc. And especially visible in the universities, doing training to law students, inviting them to events at the company and more.
What career advice would you give to your younger self?

  • Maximize education. Take a top-notch international LL.M. in addition to my qualification, and optimally gain a qualification in another jurisdiction. Also, take the e-MBA that I was planning to take.
What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • In-house lawyers can’t do business
Adam Woodhall, Chief Executive, Lawyers For Net Zero

What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • That in-house lawyers are only responsible for legal matters: GCs are clearly now key corporate leaders.  The skills and knowledge a GC now needs is so broad and deep that it takes a special person, and team around them, to deliver that.  In addition to legal insight GCs need to utilise commercial savvy, emotional intelligence, as well as being a business psychic – enabling their organisation to stay ahead of the game whilst competitors are targeted by regulators, activists and shareholders.
How do you see the profession of in-house law changing in the second half of 2023?

  • There are many indicators that GCs and their teams are increasingly utilising their position as corporate leaders to drive climate and ESG action in their organisation.  Whilst this is happening all over the world, it does appear this is being led by the UK in-house legal sector.   Looking into my crystal ball, I’d predict that this will only accelerate the rest of this year, and go into 2024.
What has been your greatest achievement in your current role so far?

  • It’s been a real privilege to be part of the momentum that is building in the UK legal sector regarding climate and environmental issues.  Recent highlights being the Law Society sharing it’s powerful ‘Climate Change Guidance’,  the Legal Charter 1.5 being launched many of the UK’s biggest law firms, many young lawyers joining Legal Voices for the Future, and of course the ongoing success of the Chancery Lane Project and their climate clauses.  Our Leaders Programme is also going from strength to strength, with many global GCs participating including those from Rolls Royce, Centrica, National Grid, BUPA and Specsavers.
Barry Matthews, Group Deputy General Counsel, Pennon

What has been your greatest achievement in your current role so far?

  • Landing the first acquisition of a solar project to kick start our renewable energy self-sufficiency strategy and underpin our operational Net Zero 2030 commitment.
How do you see the profession of in-house law changing in the second half of 2023?

  • More for less. The ever-present drum beat of a GCs existence for over a decade!
What are the top 3 external influences impacting Legal right now?

  • Inflationary pressures on employee needs
  • Ever increasing focus on ESG and balance of return for shareholders
  • As always…advances in tech, in particular AI
What is your department doing to attract fresh talent?

  • The launch of a Solicitor Apprenticeship programme in partnership with BARBRI and Danmar
  • Supporting the roll out of the Social Mobility Business Partnership programme (www.smbp.org.uk) to the Great South West

Mila Trezza, Executive Coach and Founder, Coaching Lawyers by Mila Trezza

How do you see the profession of in-house law changing in the second half of 2023?

  • In-house legal teams will stay focused on remaining efficient in 2023 as well as continue expanding their role outside the traditional remit of legal advice.
  • Many in-house lawyers are now viewed as “more” than advisers. They project manage and serve as governance, ESG, and compliance reference points. They take on workstreams from other departments —many even move into board roles. Some of these legal teams are still in the process of identifying the exact perimeter of what has become, de facto, their broader remit. The challenge, for those in-house teams and their leaders, is often tied to spelling out more precisely their new responsibilities - thus ensuring full recognition of the value they bring to organisations.
How are you ensuring your team has commercial awareness and can help make decisions about the strategic direction of the company?

  • I believe the most effective way in-house legal teams develop commercial awareness is by regularly hearing it directly from business people.
  • Consistently exposing in-house lawyers to the thinking of decision-makers requires planning and creating opportunities such as meetings, internal workshops, and regular one-to-one conversations.
  • At the more junior level, lawyers begin developing commercial awareness from an observer role, which then develops into a contributor role and eventually evolves into an effective adviser and influencer role. A legal manager aims to guide, encourage and support this transition.
What career advice would you give to your younger self?

  • Make a priority surrounding yourself with plenty of great mentors and people who challenge your ideas but also allow you to be “you”. Choose your role models carefully, and remember that as you develop in your career and complexity multiplies by the year, greater role models may help you make the real leap. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a company to raise a leader.

Andrew Wingfield, Co-Founder, OFF ROAD LEGAL

What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • I believe the #1 misconception - which is really two misconceptions - is that business teams tend to believe the legal function is less important than it is and legal functions believe they are more important than they really are. To differing extents, they can both be right! This points to the importance of any efforts which are aimed at removing such misconceptions and clarifying a common concept of what the legal function is there to do - which is the basis of collaboration.
What are the top 3 external influences impacting Legal right now?

  • Cost, cost and cost. Profit is becoming scarce for some organisations in the current climate, and the legal function has not escaped from being viewed as a 'cost centre' and therefore expected to deliver some form of cost savings. Law firms have not delivered dramatic cost reductions in the services they offer, so any way to reduce external legal spend which is for the account of the company in question is a target - and the temptation is to move that to the legal function. Finally, positively, the cost of technology has lowered dramatically while increasing in power. This is clearly an opportunity for all.
What career advice would you give to your younger self?

  • You are not a lawyer. What I mean by this is that a person's idea of what they want to be is heavily vested in such labels as 'I am a lawyer'. But it is a pretty meaningless concept when you look at the diversity of activities, specialties and career options which exist in, or adjacent to, the profession. Therefore, I would encourage prospective lawyers to think more about the actual environment they want to be in and the type of contribution they want to make, not just the label. 

Peter Impey, Co-Founder, OFF ROAD LEGAL

How do you predict technology will transform how legal departments operate and deliver services in the next 3 years?

  • Only the brave make predictions! A full answer is not possible here so suffice it to say I think that the availability of technology will continue to catalyse a more profound revolution in the legal function. Successful digital transformation requires so much to happen prior to tech deployment and I think legal departments will transform through shifts in strategy, skills mix, investment blend, leadership and collaboration. The resulting digital legal department can deliver more for less freeing people to act as strategic partners to the business. The aim is for standard legal work to move to self-service as the service delivery model changes, while the energy of the core legal team shifts to data-driven insights for improved risk mitigation and controls. The successful legal departments will extend through digital collaboration to internal stakeholders and at the same time become more tightly integrated to external partners and customers.
How do you see the profession of in-house law changing in the second half of 2023?

  • The first half of 2023 was notable for the explosion of ChatGPT. While Facebook took three years to reach 50M users, ChatGPT had 100M users two months after launch. This fast adoption raises awareness of possibilities and expectations grow quickly. In the second half of 2023 more progressive in-house teams will start thinking about their strategies for deploying generative Ai as part of their legal tech toolsets. These will act similarly to ChatGPT in function but tailored to the legal context and use cases.
  • I think in-house teams will want to leverage the incredible capabilities of this new and accelerating revolution. Already there are ‘large language model’ generative Ai applications going to market within the legal sector, and we are already seeing demand for clever chatbots and contract assistance (reviewing, creating and so on). The challenge is to prioritise and deliver change while maintaining and improving levels of performance. This is a skill that is achieved through 'portability' which is possible when enough attention is paid to the 6Ps of purpose, people, planning, process, platform and performance.
What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • “Legal teams are blockers: they say 'no'. Legal people are dinosaurs, stuck in their ways, slow to adopt technology, resistant to change and reluctant to accept realities of modern working life.” In our experience this view misunderstands the role of legal as risk managers for a business and underestimates the flexibility and willingness of legal professionals to embrace new working practices and tools. To reverse this misconception a GC must work hard on communication while relying on data to manage internal clients from the business. At the same time a GC can (i) develop a clear internal change strategy to empower their lawyers through upskilling and adoption of best practices and (ii) establish the business case to invest in a) best in class legal tech and b) operational headcount to support the department.

Rebecca Cater, Head, The Centre For Legal Leadership

What has been your greatest achievement in your current role so far?

  • Having led the Centre for Legal Leadership since its creation in partnership with RPC in 2016, I have upheld CLL's core value – that our community is 'for in-house by in-house', and I highly value listening to lawyers varying in seniority, sector and background. This unique insight enabled me to understand that in-house lawyers are missing vital support, particularly focusing on improving leadership and personal development. Therefore, over the past 18 months, I have developed and successfully run two certified professional development courses in collaboration with The University of Law for in-house – The Effective In-House Lawyer and The Lead In-House Lawyer. The course was first explored by leading a series of roundtables comprising in-house lawyers to understand what the community desired from such a course. In-house lawyers wanted to hear from those working in the field rather than lecturers/coaches outside the legal profession. Hence, I sourced guest lecturers who wanted to share with the community, to teach on a variety of topics. The aim of each course was to combine thought-provoking teaching with a unique networking opportunity, combined with utilising a varied group of lecturers to inspire those from all backgrounds that they can succeed in this profession.
  • We have held a successful run of The Lead In-House Lawyer (taking place between January and July 2023) and four runs of The Effective In-House Lawyer. With the new course in development with The University of Law – I have been extremely proud of this collaboration, as these courses deserve the credibility and support of this prestigious educational institution.
  • The collaboration with the University of Law could not have been so successful without the endorsement and guidance of key partners within RPC. I'm incredibly proud of everything CLL has accomplished and thankful to the innovative foresight of RPC in championing such a unique knowledge and community hub for in-house lawyers.
How do you see the profession of in-house law changing in the second half of 2023?

  • When thinking how to answer this question, I immediately thought of a quote one lawyer exclaimed at a recent CLL roundtable - "It feels like the world is in constant crisis". The past few years, have been a stream of unprecedented times from Brexit to the Covid-19 pandemic to the Ukraine war to a cost of living crisis with no clear sign of relenting.
  • As a result, in-house lawyers are needing to evolve. It has never been more important to understand your organisation from top to bottom. This begins with listening to stakeholders, making sure you are aware of consequential decisions being made (hopefully ensuring legal are considered in these discussions) and making sure you are having a trusted relationship with key stakeholders. When these relationships are strong, it is much easier to gather the information necessary to increase the legal team's effectiveness and best serve your organisation. You must ensure you understand your organisation's goals, their risk appetite and how the commercials (yes, the finances!) are affected by these. And this high-level of understanding only comes from strong relationships throughout your organisation.
  • With this knowledge of your company on a macro-level, you then need to understand on where the legal team, and you as an individual, sit within your organisation. Establish a strategy that aligns with your organisation's goals and prioritise in line with their priorities.
  • Finally, and most importantly, demonstrate the legal teams value, and do this loudly. With the world in flux, it is necessary for the legal to be visible, to be viewed as business partners that progress business rather than block. Therefore, you need to spend time understanding the best way to communicate this to your organisation and its stakeholders. Some value can be easily displayed, such as finalising a high-value M&A deal, but a lot of the legal department's value resides in preventing "what could have happened", which is harder to communicate and harder to see from the outside. So tell people how you avoided litigation, or protected the organisation's reputation, and demonstrate how this saved cost overall. Learn how to market yourself and your team internally, because it is an unfortunate truth, that people will not fully comprehend the value of legal without you telling them – which can lead to the worst-case scenario, that your company only sees legal as a costly department.
What is the #1 misconception about the legal function in business today?

  • That the legal function has no commercial awareness. This is the constant struggle for in-house legal departments. However, this is not true. In fact, the legal function is arguably the most well-positioned department to have a clear oversight of the business as a whole. The legal function is involved with all of the deals, transactions and the day-to-day running throughout every department of the organisation, this gives legal a keen awareness of an organisation's overall strategy and how that is progressing.
  • Further, lawyers are intrinsically objective, analytical, creative thinkers and combined with their knowledge of the law and ethics, enables in-house lawyers to give unbiased but beneficial commercial advice. This misconception can lead to the legal function being erroneously viewed as purely a blocker or a 'red-tape' department. But if lawyers are brought onto projects early, legal are well equipped to find intelligent solutions, that avoid costly mistakes later down the line.
Kind Regards,
Legal Leaders Europe 2023 (7 – 8 September, London)
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