Legal Business

Legal Business Awards 2020 – Most Transformative In-House Team of the Year

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Legal Business Awards 2020 BarclaysBTCooleyGlaxoSmithKline

In what is a brand new category for the Legal Business Awards in 2020, we are pleased to reveal the Most Transformative In-House Team of the Year.

This award recognises in-house legal teams that have made a major contribution to change or transformation either at an industry or sector level, or have championed unusual or innovative approaches. This could range from dealing admirably with dramatic changes in a particular industry to wrestling with challenges in society linked to cultural or technological upheaval.

 

 

 

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Winner – BT

The in-house legal department at BT has undergone significant changes over the last two years. First, group general counsel Sabine Chalmers joined from Anheuser-Busch InBev in April 2018, replacing the widely-admired Dan Fitz. Then the team was restructured to mirror the shape of the wider business before, finally, a high-profile managed services deal was signed with newly-listed law firm DWF.

The resulting transformation made BT the standout choice for this year’s award. The company’s lawyers are now freed up for strategic work, with 84% of low-value deals managed by a legal process outsourcing team of 34 in Belfast and Wroclaw. Moreover, a 10% reduction in the total cost of legal for 2018/19 means the figure now stands at about £70m.

Meanwhile, BT also grabbed headlines when a team of 43 covering insurance and real estate work switched to DWF on a five-year multimillion-pound managed legal services arrangement. General counsel of technology at BT, Chris Fowler (and LB Awards judge, who recused himself from this category), was the lawyer charged with finding the right partner for the managed services deal, and he began by establishing the overall cost of BT’s function. There is just one budget now, but this was not always the case; as recently as 2017 there were six. After assessing 26 potential providers, a shortlist of four was agreed, and finally DWF was chosen.

The changes to the company’s legal function displayed an agility to respond to changes in the wider business. In 2018, BT announced plans to cut around 13,000 jobs over the next three years in a bid to save £1.5bn in costs. A month later, chief executive Gavin Peterson surprisingly resigned after five years at the helm. Throughout, the company’s legal function has been adapting to these seismic shifts in the business.

Director of transformation, Dave Hart, now leads a team of 15 tasked with building on Fowler’s foundation and dedicating full-time resource to the ‘transformation agenda.’ Expect more change and evolution at BT in the years to come.

Highly Commended – NetApp

A close second for this year’s award was American hybrid cloud data services company NetApp, with slick technology use and an expanded business function impressing judges.

One such piece of tech was a robotic process automation tool designed to improve contract management. NetApp used the tool, which it named Bot-icelli, to reduce end-to-end contract processing time from 15 minutes to 2.5 minutes, freeing up parts of the business for more complex work.

NetApp’s legal function has also helped the company develop beyond its single-product origins. Today, the business includes products and services, including a cloud business. One specific area where legal aided the wider business was in reducing a 70-page agreement for consumption of hyper-converged infrastructure to a two-page agreement, expediting time to close deals.

NetApp Legal also expanded its purview to include a government relations function. Over the past year, the company benchmarked and researched to better understand how NetApp could design and leverage a government relations function to proactively advance business objectives.

Other nominations

Barclays

The Mindful Business Charter, devised by Barclays alongside Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard, aims to cut down on workplace practices that contribute to stress and poor mental health among lawyers, and has grown to nearly 40 signatories since its inception in late 2018.

Coca-Cola European Partners

Over just three months in 2019, a small legal team at CCEP navigated a slew of regulatory and governance changes to complete a listing move that had never been attempted before: a transfer from Euronext to the London Stock Exchange.

GlaxoSmithKline

The legal team has been central in GSK and Pfizer smoothly combing their respective consumer healthcare businesses to create a world-leading joint venture with combined sales of approximately £9.8bn.

Mitie

With the outsourcing sector facing turbulent times in recent years, Mitie’s legal team has been at the heart of its transformation as it has ridden the storm to successfully refocus, reset and re-establish its business.

Legal Business

The big call from BT to MP

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In-house BT

Darren Jones discusses leaving his role at telecoms giant BT to sit in the UK Parliament

Many were surprised when Darren Jones was elected Labour MP for Bristol North West – none more so than Jones himself. Except for, perhaps, his boss at BT Legal.

Legal Business

BT concludes delayed panel review with 37 firms including Magic Circle heavyweights winning places

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Adviser reviews BT

BT has concluded its long-awaited UK and Ireland panel review, with a raft of Magic Circle firms including Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance and Linklaters winning places on the extended roster.

The review, which was officially kicked off last July, when tender documents were sent out, also saw Addleshaw Goddard, Baker McKenzie, Berwin Leighton Paisner, CMS Cameron McKenna and Eversheds Sutherland named as advisers.

The new panel, which will run for three years until April 2020, was overseen by BT’s director, equality of access office & COO Legal Governance and Compliance, Jon Furmston and central operations head of suppliers and systems Keith Thomson. Both Thomson and Furmston took over from BT’s group director of ethics and compliance Gareth Tipton, who was originally overseeing the review alongside a project team.

The review was originally supposed to be wrapped up by September/October last year after which the company planned to kick start a review to create its first (non-UK) international legal panel.

BT’s previous roster compromised Bird & Bird, CMS, Freshfields, Wiggin and Sheridans. There were also arrangements with alternative legal providers Obelisk, Axiom, Halebury and SSQ Interim Solutions. BT is expected to continue an informal relationship with alternative providers.

Last November Legal Business revealed BT had started a wide-reaching strategic review on how to change its internal structure to bring its lawyers closer to the business.

The legal department, which was one of the first in-house teams to obtain an alternative business structure licence and launch its now long-running and legal process outsourcing venture, was also working out a strategy for the procurement process and assessing its external spend with its traditional and non-law firm service providers. At the time general counsel for UK commercial legal services, Chris Fowler, said the upcoming panel would be more ‘nuanced’ and firms would be categorised under ‘capacity’ and ‘expertise’.

kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk

The full list is as follows:

Addleshaw Goddard

Allen & Overy

ASB Law

Baker McKenzie

Berwin Leighton Paisner

Bird & Bird

Bond Dickinson

Burges Salmon

Carter-Ruck

Cleaver Fulton Rankin

Clifford Chance

DAC Beachcroft

CMS Cameron McKenna

DWF

Ernst & Young

Eversheds Sutherland

Fieldfisher

Fragomen

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Gateley

Kemp Little

Lewis Silkin

Linklaters

Mason Hayes & Curran

Matheson

MSI Global Alliance

Napier & Sons Solicitors

Onside Law

Osborne Clarke

Reed Smith

Shepherd & Wedderburn

Simmons & Simmons

TLT

Trowers & Hamlins

Tughans

Winckworth Sherwood

Wright Hassall

Legal Business

Quinn prepares to mount shareholder claim against BT following accounting scandal

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Litigation BTQuinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is investigating a potential class action against BT on behalf of its shareholders following an accounting scandal which saw almost £8bn, or more than a fifth, wiped off the telco’s stock value.

BT Group originally estimated a write-down of £145m last year citing ‘inappropriate management behaviour’ in its Italian business. The company later revised the figure to £530m in its third quarter results following an independent review by KPMG.

Quinn is speaking to its Volkswagen and RBS clients which are all major institutional investors and is looking to begin damages analysis.

It has not yet been decided whether it will be a funded case or whether Quinn will bring this as a Damages Based Agreement, where the shareholders will agree to pay the lawyer a percentage of sums recovered in a claim.

Quinn’s team on the case includes partners Ted Greeno, Richard East and Hamburg partner Nadine Herman. The team expects it will take around two to three months to put a claim together.

East (pictured) told Legal Business: ‘It’s very likely that a lot of our clients on the VW claim will have holdings in BT stock. These are large institutional investors and they will have an exposure to BT undoubtedly.’

Quinn is considering whether there is case under a section 90 of the Financial Services and Markets Act which provides for shareholder group actions or if there are other common law claims arising out of the accounting scandal.

Separately, litigation funder Bentham Europe also confirmed it opened talks with BT shareholders in October. However Bentham declined to comment on whether it had instructed legal counsel.

In 2015 Quinn was instructed by Bentham in a shareholder lawsuit against Volkswagen after the company lost as much as $33bn in market value in ten days after it admitted to cheating emissions tests. The US firm also teamed up with consumer rights firm Hagens Berman to file a class action complaint in Los Angeles.

Late last year claimants represented by Quinn settled their case in the long running £4bn shareholder group action against the Royal Bank of Scotland.

madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

BT kicks off panel review following Brexit delay

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Adviser reviews BT
legal-business-default

BT has kicked off a formal panel review for its UK legal advisers after a five month delay and will create a separate international panel for the first time later this year.

BT, which houses a 400 strong in-house team led by group general counsel Dan Fitz, was due to start reviewing its UK legal roster in March. However the process has only begun this week as the company was awaiting the results of the Brexit vote.

Officially starting today (20 July) the review is being led by BT’s chief operating officer for legal, Gareth Tipton, alongside a project team after a tender document was circulated to firms in first round submissions.

The latest review is expected to be wrapped up by September/October after which the company will kick start a review to create its first (non-UK) international legal panel.

Its current core roster, which was set in 2013 for three-years, comprises Bird & Bird, CMS Cameron McKenna, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Wiggin and Sheridans. There are also arrangements with alternative legal providers Obelisk, Axiom, Halebury and SSQ Interim Solutions. BT is expected to continue an informal relationship with alternative providers.

In early November Legal Business revealed BT had started a wide-reaching strategic review on how to change its internal structure to bring its lawyers closer to the business.

The legal department, which was one of the first in-house teams to obtain an alternative business structure licence and launch its now long-running and legal process outsourcing venture, was also working out a strategy for the procurement process and assessing its external spend with its traditional and non-law firm service providers. At the time general counsel for UK commercial legal services, Chris Fowler, said the upcoming panel would be more ‘nuanced’ and firms would be categorised under ‘capacity’ and ‘expertise’.

Other high-profile panel reviews of late includes Dixons Carphone which saw eleven advisers including Freshfields, DLA Piper, Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard win places on the company’s inaugural panel following its recent £3.8bn merger. Barclays also gifted Clifford Chance, Ashurst, Simmons & Simmons, Hogan Lovells and Reed Smith coveted spots on its overhauled its global roster in June and slashed its number of go-to advisers by over 60%.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

BT kicks off strategy review to overhaul internal function

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In-house BT
legal-business-default

BT’s in-house legal team has begun a wide-reaching strategic review on how to change its internal structure to bring its lawyers closer to the business, while the telco also prepares for its next panel review.

Chris Fowler, general counsel (GC) for UK commercial legal services, said the review will see the team ‘centrally manage the legal resource (such as litigation and certain commercial functions) but keep senior lawyers as close as possible to individual business units to act as a business partner and meet their specific business needs’.

Led by group GC and company secretary Dan Fitz, BT’s legal team currently comprises 400 lawyers and paralegals.

The strategic review was derailed by the telecom giant’s proposed £12.5bn acquisition of mobile group EE during the summer. Fowler said that as a result the in-house team has not pursued its strategy as quickly as planned but the aim is to ‘manage the work around what people do rather than who they do it for.’

‘Each individual business unit within BT has different cost pressures. If we’re not careful these can be arbitrarily applied and undermine our ability to provide a consistent service therefore managing people by what they do allows us to mitigate and better manage peaks and troughs.’

The legal department, which was one of the first in-house teams to obtain an alternative business structure licence and launch its now long-running and legal process outsourcing venture, is also preparing for its panel review of external advisers, as the existing one is expected to expire in March 2016.

Its current core roster, which was set in 2013 for three-years, comprises Bird & Bird, CMS Cameron McKenna, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Wiggin and Sheridans. There are also arrangements with alternative legal providers Obelisk, Axiom, Halebury and SSQ Interim Solutions.

BT is working out a strategy for the procurement process and assessing its external spend with its traditional and non-law firm service providers. Fowler said the upcoming panel will be ‘more nuanced’ and firms will be categorised under ‘capacity’ and ‘expertise’.

‘In the past we haven’t articulated our buying strategy as fully as we could. What’s changed most notably is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It would be great if firms had more strategic conversations with us, otherwise it tends to be very tactical and matter-in-hand. It’s not often at a higher level. In the worst case, it’s a bit like having a talk with a plumber as opposed to an interior designer.’

BT has no minimum commitments to its external law firms and the panel is neither fixed nor exclusive. However, work fielded to external firms in the past has become increasingly more niche. In the GC Power List 2015 BT said its external legal spend was down 90% since 2010.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Read more on what GCs think of external advisers in ‘The In-House Lawyer Survey 2015: Balancing Acts: Bang for your buck’ here. 

Legal Business

BT kicks off strategy review to overhaul internal function

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In-house BT
legal-business-default

BT’s in-house legal team has begun a wide-reaching strategic review on how to change its internal structure to bring its lawyers closer to the business, while the telco also prepares for its next panel review.

Chris Fowler, general counsel (GC) for UK commercial legal services, said the review will see the team ‘centrally manage the legal resource (such as litigation and certain commercial functions) but keep senior lawyers as close as possible to individual business units to act as a business partner and meet their specific business needs’.

Legal Business

BT

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In-house BT
legal-business-default
  • Group general counsel and company secretary: Dan Fitz.
  • Team headcount: 400 lawyers including paralegals.

BT’s standout legal team, led by group general counsel (GC) Dan Fitz, along with a senior management team that includes chief operating officer and director of compliance and ethics, Gareth Tipton, and GC for UK commercial legal services, Chris Fowler, has long been ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation. Headlines include being one of the first in-house legal teams to obtain an alternative business structure licence and launching its now long-running and successful legal process outsourcing (LPO) venture. As a result, BT’s commercial external legal spend is down 90% since 2010.

Recent highlights for the team have included a landmark interim ruling from the Competition Appeal Tribunal against TV broadcaster BSkyB, which was ordered at the end of 2014 to make its sports channels available to rival BT, paving the way for BT’s YouView to air Sky Sports 1 and 2. Since moving aggressively into sports in 2012, BT’s legal team in 2013 helped to secure rights to broadcast the UEFA Champions League and Europa League from 2015. Within the legal team itself, 80% of low-value work is now handled offshore by Axiom, which at the start of 2014 won a contract to replace previous LPO provider UnitedLex. Tipton says: ‘We are pushing people up the value chain and being more cost-effective.’ BT’s overall legal spend is now split 58% internal and 42% external.

The team also set up a coaching and mentoring accreditation scheme for senior lawyers in 2014 to help with career development. Another initiative includes the establishment of Your Voice: a forum that includes representative lawyers from across all of the regions in which BT operates and communicates issues to the BT leadership team. The team also offers flexible working as a matter of course, and boasts a notable number of women in senior transactional and commercial roles.

In terms of its dealings with external law firms, BT operates a layered approach, with a regional network of preferred suppliers bolstered by Axiom, Obelisk Legal Support, Halebury, Shilton Sharpe Quarry’s Interim Solutions and NewGalexy. BT also typically fields more work out to regional law firms, with Wright Hassall undertaking a large and growing portion of its commercial instructions.

The telecoms giant has no minimum commitments to its external law firms and the panel is not fixed or exclusive. However, the work being fielded to external firms is becoming more niche – Bird & Bird used to undertake mainly commercial work for BT but, at the last review, around a third of its work related to competition or intellectual property litigation.

Fowler, who has been driving the Axiom deal and other new initiatives, says: ‘A lot of this comes down to leadership. I’m lucky that Dan said to me: “I want you thinking about the bigger picture.”’

Legal Business

In-house: BT Global Services GC moves to Serco

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Strategic recruitment BT
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UK outsourcing company Serco has hired BT Global Services general counsel (GC) David Eveleigh as its group GC and company secretary.

The high-profile hire will see Eveleigh join the group’s executive committee on 17 November 2014 to manage the group’s legal affairs. He replaces Serco’s current company secretary John Hickey, who will assume another senior role within Serco.

Eveleigh currently sits on BT Global Services’ legal leadership team for the wider BT Group. Prior to this, he was GC for BT’s operations in Canada, US and Latin America, and was based in California. Eveleigh started his legal career at legacy firm Ashurst Morris Crisp.

Serco Group chief executive officer Rupert Soames said: ‘David Eveleigh is a highly accomplished general counsel with extensive experience in multinational organisations. His appointment marks an important milestone in our corporate renewal programme. I am delighted to welcome David to Serco where he will be an invaluable member of the senior team as we build a strong future for the business.’

Alastair Lyons, chairman of Serco Group added: ‘On behalf of the board, I would like to offer our thanks to John for his excellent work and I wish him all the best for his future in Serco.’

In February, Archana Makol was named compliance officer of the legal practice for BT Law, replacing Miles Jobling.

jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk