Legal Business

The A-Teams – In Pursuit of Excellence

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The 2015 Legal Business GC Power List puts the strength and depth of top in-house legal teams under the spotlight. With these teams largely forced to re-boot post-Lehman, what does it take to become the best in the business in a risk-driven economy?

In the last two years, Telefónica UK has reduced its reliance on external legal advice to the extent that its spend on law firms has fallen by 66%. Meanwhile, at BT, from which O2 span off in 2001 before being acquired by Telefónica in 2005, commercial external legal spend is down a startling 90% since 2010. Despite this, the volume of legal work required by both telcos hasn’t diminished: it is just being handled more efficiently in-house.