Philip Bramwell
BAE SYSTEMS
Team size: 250
Major law firms used: Allen & Overy, Eversheds Sutherland, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
‘We’re not rivalling Netflix in customer take-up and pleasure, but we are working hard to make our online training tools as good as possible.’
The experienced and influential group general counsel of defence multinational BAE Systems, Philip Bramwell, has one key goal in the operation of his 250-strong in-house legal team: making the wider business of more than 80,000 employees more ‘legally astute’. He consistently cites the work of US academic Constance Bagley, ‘Winning Legally: The Value of Legal Astuteness’, whose theory is that in-house demands will always be proportionate to the scale of a business, unless that business has a better knowledge of its law and regulations.
‘Our philosophy is to staff to mean forecast demand, workload and specialisms,’ Bramwell says. ‘When I arrived at BAE [in 2007], we had no employment team; now we have five full-time employment lawyers. We’ve added six IT lawyers where five years ago there were none.’
As the burden of regulation has increased and the social expectations of business has grown, in-house legal departments have necessarily bulked up, he says. This is particularly the case in the defence industry, with Bramwell saying he has never had a business leader ask him to decrease expenditure on regulatory compliance. ‘Those regulations are there for a reason and they’re onerous for a reason. Our commitment to abide by them meticulously is total.’
But the in-house legal department remains a cost function within BAE, which means it has to justify its existence and demonstrate where it is adding value. Bramwell says lawyers are not inherently good salespeople, which means the function needs to learn to ‘manage its publicity’. If you do not tell the business what you have done, the business will likely conclude you have not done anything. This is where the ‘legally astute’ business comes in. Bramwell’s lawyers provide monthly value-add reports that detail what they have done over and above the day job. Developing smarter training is a key focus.
‘We’ve had some great success with online training. We’re not rivalling Netflix in terms of customer take-up and pleasure, but we are working hard to make our online training tools as good as possible.’
Carol Hui
HEATHROW AIRPORT HOLDINGS
Team size: 25
Major law firms used: Allen & Overy, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Eversheds Sutherland, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Owen White, Pinsent Masons, Towerhouse
Carol Hui has been GC at Europe’s busiest airport since 2009 but more recently expanded her role when she was appointed chief of staff in 2017. Already on the company’s executive board, two departments were added to Hui’s remit: communications and sustainability. Those, alongside the existing legal affairs and assurance teams, ensure Hui has an even greater say in how the company is run.
‘A lot of the role now is not just looking at the black-and-white legalities, it’s about protecting the reputation of the company,’ Hui says. ‘I’ve been with the company nine years this year [2018], and it values the input and experience that I have, and the knowledge of the company I’ve accumulated.’
The four departments Hui now leads cover everything from operations issues and corporate work in legal affairs, internal audits and risk in assurance, internal and external communications (including government relations), and a focus on sustainability as part of the airport’s Heathrow 2.0 strategy. Hui is credited with revamping the legal department since her arrival. There was no formal panel before she took the role, but she quickly reduced reliance on external lawyers to keep the majority of work in-house. The airport recently slimmed down its legal panel from nine to seven firms and restructured it from 11 sub-panels to a main general approved list. Hui led the review, with the panel effective for three years from 1 January 2019.
Pinsent Masons and legacy Berwin Leighton Paisner advised the airport on the planning process for the approval of Heathrow’s third runway, with Hui saying the two firms came together to effectively act as one firm. Both are instructed together before the work is allocated to whoever in the joint team is best placed to do it, meaning a partner from one firm may supervise a team of lawyers from both firms.
‘We try to be as innovative and commercial as we can, and come up with solutions rather than always saying no. It’s important to understand the business well and be commercial in outlook, but we are also the guardians of the company, and need to always do the right thing and have strong values.’
One Magic Circle partner comments: ‘She is very competent. Heathrow has been through a political, environmental and legal minefield.’
Helen Mason
MORGAN SINDALL GROUP
Team size: Six
Major law firms used: Pinsent Masons, RPC, Slaughter and May
‘One of our challenges is to buck the perception that all construction is bad,’ says the GC of Morgan Sindall Group, Helen Mason. Not that easy, particularly in the wake of the collapse of construction giant Carillion and with well-documented troubles at construction outsourcer Kier Group. ‘Our focus is on consolidation, building our profit margins, continuing to do what we do best in the markets we do it best in,’ Mason notes.
Morgan Sindall has a portfolio of six divisions, comprising construction and infrastructure, fit out, property services, partnership housing, urban regeneration and investments. Its profits grew 42% to £52m on revenue of £2.8bn for the year to 31 December 2017.
Mason joined as the group’s first GC from Fieldfisher in 2014, and has a team of six lawyers split between the construction and infrastructure and urban regeneration divisions. In the years after she joined, Mason advised on two multimillion-pound disputes simultaneously and says there is now no ongoing major litigation against the group.
‘The focus really has been on embedding the lawyers as business partners and we’ve established the Morgan Sindall Business Academy, which is within the construction and infrastructure division, to provide training and development so that we’re seen as the providers of support rather than the ones to come and tell when it all goes wrong.’
Alongside the legal-led academy has been the implementation of a compliance learning management system to deliver training on areas such as the Bribery Act and GDPR. Mason says this has helped with compliance because it is auditable and therefore helps with winning work, because the company can present customers with what people learned and how.
‘It’s rock-and-roll stuff – if you’re having trouble sleeping let me send it through. But seriously, our colleagues like doing it and have competitions about how well they each did, which has really surprised me.’
Maaike de Bie
ROYAL MAIL (soon to be GC at easyJet)
Team size: 40
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Dentons, Herbert Smith Freehills, Slaughter and May
‘Working as many hours as possible is not how you become a successful in-house lawyer.’
Despite resigning as GC of Royal Mail in 2018 in favour of switching to easyJet, Maaike de Bie has undeniably left her mark on the in-house community in recent years. Her influence at Royal Mail saw its legal team almost double from 23 lawyers five years ago to just under 40 now. Largely this was down to de Bie’s concerted recruitment of mostly junior lawyers in a new Sheffield hub and the realignment of a business crime team, which now reports into the GC.
For her, the benefits were clear: ‘Bringing more people into Sheffield was important because we were very top-heavy, with most lawyers over ten-years PQE. Now we have two trainees, and some newly qualified people and some two-to-six-years PQE. It’s a more tech-focused generation.’
Doing more than just adding numbers to the team, de Bie also put a heavy focus on training and development to enrich it. The in-house team was trained to be financially astute and to get the best value from external partners, and she oversaw an internal training academy for junior lawyers.
It is not just internal innovation: de Bie also garners respect for her approach to extracting value from external counsel. Despite being told it would be impossible to use flexible fee arrangements for investigations work, she persevered: ‘During investigations, you get many requests for information with really tight deadlines. When one of these comes in, we don’t want to spend ten days negotiating fees with our external counsel. So we said to our firm, “Let’s categorise the requests into three bands of importance – high, medium and low. We can have fixed ranges based on the importance.” When a request came in, all we had to agree was the level of band. It’s worked really well.’
As for the future generations, de Bie insists the in-house route is an attractive one for aspiring lawyers. ‘The only thing in common between an in-house lawyer and a private practice lawyer is the word “lawyer.” Comparing them is really difficult. For instance, we are not incentivised by working as many hours as possible – that’s not how you become a successful in-house lawyer.’
Neil Murrin
TRAINLINE
Team size: Ten
Major law firms used: Baker McKenzie, Fieldfisher, Kemp Little
‘I make a point of sitting with the rest of the team.’
As the GC of a constantly evolving mobile ticketing app, Neil Murrin has had to keep up with the times. The introduction of the company’s first legal ops professionals, and saving Trainline £250,000 as a result, has gone some way in doing that.
With a mandate of streamlining Trainline’s internal functions, Murrin appointed Holly Manvell and Keruschka Shunmugam, as head of legal operations and legal operations manager respectively. While both were already part of the business, they represented the first dedicated legal ops function. Murrin oversaw as the in-house team designed and implemented a matter-management system for the wider Trainline business, offering templates and best-practice guides. This has improved contracting time by 30% and led to the cost savings.
Other innovations from the Trainline legal team include the implementation of Concord, an end-to-end contract management system, and using electronic signature product DocuSign, which Murrin insists has provided ‘miraculous efficiency’. Murrin says that this introduction of legal ops was the most important thing he and his team did in 2018. ‘It means we can talk to the business about where resources are being used – a prioritisation discussion.’
In addition to the increased appreciation for technology, Murrin has gained plaudits for maintaining a stable budget, despite a boom in headcount. Five years ago, Trainline had around four lawyers, compared to ten now. However, the business-as-usual legal services budget of around £500,000 has remained ‘relatively flat’ during that time period, according to Murrin. As for the secret to his success, Murrin says it is down to being a team player: ‘I’m open and make a point of sitting with the rest of the team. I’m always looking for feedback.’
Rob Booth
THE CROWN ESTATE
Team size: 18
Major law firms used: Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, Hogan Lovells
‘Rob Booth is an example of someone who brings the law into the boardroom.’
Originally featuring as a Rising Star in the 2014 GC Powerlist, The Crown Estate GC Rob Booth has gone on to establish himself as one of the most well-respected in-house legal chiefs in the UK.
In particular, he has garnered a reputation for being at the forefront of tech and innovation in in-house law. In 2018, he introduced an initiative called The Bionic Lawyer Project, which seeks to drive extra value and competitiveness from The Crown Estate’s panel law firms.
This came after a year spent speaking to other GCs as well as legal technologists, investors and people outside the legal industry to crowdsource ideas.
Booth comments: ‘We think we buy as well as we can and have a roster of firms we really respect. It’s finding the things that are going to continue to push competitive advantage.’
He argues that it is not just a case of being demanding, as his firms have contributed to the project: ‘They have been amazing. I built it with them.’
Hogan Lovells partner Charles Brasted argues Booth is an ‘example of someone who brings the law into the boardroom.’ He adds: ‘The way in which he instructs lawyers and presents the business to the outside world – he is an incredibly value-driven leader. His leadership is very much based on the values of The Crown Estate.’
David Eveleigh
SERCO GROUP
Team size: 45
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, DWF, Pinsent Masons
‘I was the company’s first general counsel,’ Serco Group’s David Eveleigh recalls about his arrival in 2014. ‘It was for good reason too; it was in quite a bit of trouble.’
That is an understatement: in November 2014 its share price plummeted to 218.7p from 674p the year before, after four profit warnings. A scandal had broken out over the misuse of taxpayers’ money: billing the Ministry of Justice millions of pounds for electronic tags for offenders who were still in prison, or even dead. On Eveleigh’s very first day in the job, the chair, Alastair Lyons, resigned during a board meeting. ‘I thought that was a bit rude,’ Eveleigh comments.
Needless to say, Eveleigh requires lawyers with special skills to keep up with the demanding environment: ‘A lot of legal professionals like big issues so they can look like a hero – transactions or disputes. Our company would be like crack cocaine for them. But by doing so, you are not helping the business. How are you making sure that these problems don’t arise in advance?’
Fortunes have begun to change for Serco in recent years. In 2018, the company bought out BTP Systems, a satellite communications business, with Eveleigh describing it as ‘the biggest deal Serco has ever done.’ He and his lawyers were equally involved in settling a major dispute in Australia.
Eveleigh has certainly played a part in steadying Serco’s ship and has been rewarded with a seat at the highest table in the company. ‘Becoming an integrated part of the management team – you really have to earn it. I think I have.’
Claire Chapman
CAPITA
Team size: 35
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, DWF, Eversheds Sutherland, Linklaters, Pinsent Masons
Claire Chapman became chief GC of outsourcing company Capita in mid-2018. She was the company’s first GC and there was no legal team, just lawyers in various parts of the business. Her role primarily focuses on legal risk exposure, liability and governance, but she has also had to build a legal team. ‘It’s involved everything from putting job descriptions in place, to creating a structure, to most importantly designing what the organisation needs from legal to best drive forward on our strategic objectives.’
It is a task she has faced before. Chapman, who featured in the 2016 GC Powerlist, was previously GC and company secretary of Daily Mail and General Trust, where she led the transformation of the company’s legal division as the trust’s first-ever legal executive. She left the media group in 2017 after almost five years.
In addition to building a legal team at Capita – organised as one central group with teams embedded in six operating divisions and a litigation team – Chapman has led a project around developing contract playbooks and training in a drive to make the wider business more self-sufficient, with legal support coming in on key matters and above agreed materiality thresholds. A third area is a panel review, which she expects to complete in early 2019.
Capita has been criticised following a tumultuous few years: chief executive Jon Lewis announced a profit warning and various other measures in early 2018 following an assessment of the company he made after taking over a couple of months previously. It reported a £513m loss for the 2017 financial year. ‘Working efficiently and managing legal risk is key, and showing the value of what lawyers do,’ Chapman says. ‘It’s not just about costs. I’m looking for ways to work smarter.’
Brona McKeown
BRITISH LAND
Team size: 13
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, Jones Day, Mayer Brown, Simmons & Simmons
Brona McKeown joined FTSE 100 real estate company British Land as GC and company secretary in January 2018. She is the company’s second GC, replacing Elaine Williams, and came to the company following nearly four years as GC of The Co-operative Bank.
McKeown had been the bank’s first legal head, having previously been GC for corporate at Barclays, and was credited for her role guiding the bank through a variety of high-profile and complex corporate events that culminated in a £700m recapitalisation in mid-2017. She says she joined British Land because it was the right time to leave the Co-op and because British Land operated in an industry with a tangible output. She believes the core skills of being a GC are transferable, irrespective of industry knowledge.
‘You can touch and feel what British Land does. One day there’s not a building there and then after a period of time there’s either a revamped building or a different one. That’s quite satisfying.’
She leads a team of 13 across company secretarial, legal and GDPR, including four lawyers overall. She was the only lawyer when she first joined, but as is typical with many real estate companies, the legal function is unlikely to get any bigger. A highlight transaction includes the mid-2018 sale of 5 Broadgate to Hong Kong-based CK Asset Holdings for £1bn.
The real estate and retail sectors are facing big challenges, she says. People are changing the way they live and work while corporations want more flexibility, all of which is altering the way people use space. ‘People are shopping online more and real estate can help brands both showcase to customers and deliver orders efficiently, whether that transaction is online or offline. There’s a lot said about the death of the high street and this latest disruption is just the latest chapter. There’s lots to play for in the retail space, but it’s a tough market.’
Tim Ashby
LAND SECURITIES GROUP
Team size: Five
Major law firms used: Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, DLA Piper, Eversheds Sutherland
Land Securities Group (Landsec) GC Tim Ashby has gone from headline buyouts in 2017 to quietly getting on with business in 2018. The one constant has been his small in-house team continuing to punch above its weight.
A reduced acquisition appetite is symptomatic of the current real estate market: Brexit headwinds have made some more cautious with their commercial investments and the bricks-and-mortar retail sector has been through some well-publicised issues.
In 2017, Ashby and his head of legal Alex Peeke were involved in the £1.3bn sale of the iconic Walkie Talkie skyscraper. The retail side was active too, with Landsec opening Westgate shopping centre in a £440m joint venture with The Crown Estate.
But last year was characterised by equally important behind-the-scenes work, with GDPR proving a major hurdle. ‘As an industry we have to be more aware of data protection,’ Ashby comments. ‘Whether you own offices or a retail centre, there are things like CCTV and Wi-Fi that we take for granted. Wi-Fi is basically a utility for clients now! That throws up a number of problems.’
Otherwise, he and his team have been preparing other vital groundwork, including an ongoing relationship with Deutsche Bank. Landsec entered into an August 2017 pre-let agreement for the banking giant’s new London headquarters at 21 Moorfields, with substantial planning and preparation soaking up the time of Landsec’s legal function.
As is typical for the real estate sector, Landsec has to send a significant amount of work out to external counsel due to the limited numbers of the in-house team. Cultivating a good understanding with panel firms Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Eversheds Sutherland and CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang is therefore key: ‘We spend a lot of time on working with our panel firms to build a strong relationship.’
Ashby defers a large amount of praise to his vastly experienced in-house team, which has remained mostly stable in recent years. ‘They are absolutely excellent lawyers. They are obviously property lawyers by background, but they also act as seasoned business partners to the whole team. They have got a lot of experience gained over many years.’
Kit Burden, global co-head of DLA Piper’s technology practice, says: ‘He’s gotten hold of the business really well and has helped to implement a good programme of change.’
Mel Rowlands
SMITHS GROUP
Team size: 75
Major law firms used: Eversheds Sutherland, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Hogan Lovells, Whitecap Legal
‘Mel Rowlands is a great lawyer but also tough when she needs to be.’
‘I’m extremely passionate about being an in-house lawyer, and I’m all for being very commercial and not forgetting why we’re around,’ comments Mel Rowlands, group GC at Smiths Group. Rowlands is an experienced in-house lawyer – she worked for British Gas and vacuum-engineering company Edwards before joining Smiths over five years ago. The well-regarded GC is described by Roger Barron, partner at Paul Hastings, as ‘a great lawyer but also tough when she needs to be’ and a ‘superb’ manager to her legal team.
Smiths operates in more than 50 countries in an array of markets, including medical technology, security devices, oil and gas, and the space and aerospace sectors. As such, Rowlands heads up a sizeable legal and compliance function within the company and an international team of 75 lawyers spanning the UK, Germany and Dubai.
Rowlands restructured the legal department when she became GC in early 2018 in a bid to encourage her team to ‘think more about business ideas rather than in legal terms’. Five ‘customer-focused’ GCs reporting to Rowlands are supported by several other GCs who provide strategic input to the business across litigation, M&A and technology.
It has already been a busy 2019 as the team has been working on separating the Smiths Group from its Smiths Medical division as part of plans to focus more on the industrial technology side of its business. Last year, Smiths bolstered its aerospace and industrial services by buying engineering solutions provider United Flexible for $345m.
‘We’ve had a strategy of growing the business over the last few years, with lots of re-reshaping through M&A. We are in the throes of separating off from Smiths Medical and integrating United Flexible, so it’s delivering business as usual while also preparing the necessary regulatory compliance for these projects.’
Rowlands is on a mission to reduce the number of law firms the business uses, which in the past has stood at as many as 360 firms due to Smiths’ size, complexity and international spread. Going forward, she wants the company to engage with law firms that are also strategic partners to the business. ‘We started with an M&A panel to get down from 25 to five, so we’re a lot closer to our target.’
Stuart Kelly
NETWORK RAIL
Team size: 26
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Clifford Chance, Eversheds Sutherland
‘Stuart Kelly never stands still and is always looking out for the next thing to improve in his legal function.’
Network Rail GC Stuart Kelly has faced constant change since taking the top legal job two years ago. It appointed a new chief executive, Andrew Haines, in May 2018, months before it sold its commercial estate portfolio of more than 5,000 properties for $1.46bn.
At the same time, Network Rail embarked on its longest-ever panel review process for work that could be worth more than £70m over five years from April 2019. The review, which took the best part of a year, was about aligning with a new five-year corporate strategy for the overall business. Kelly has just 26 lawyers in his team, lean for an organisation of Network Rail’s size, but the perfect size by Kelly’s estimation.
‘We expect that the new panel arrangement will result in smarter commercial models. The firms will be allocated to different businesses rather than competing within a business. They get the work and don’t need to look over their shoulder: that shows commitment on our part and then everyone can focus on things that drive out waste and add value.’
Network Rail will introduce a legal operations manager as part of its new panel arrangements. Kelly is also an advocate of legal tech start-up, Apperio, which tracks legal spend data. He believes innovation needs to be driven by in-house legal teams, because they know their own problems better than anybody, including external law firms. ‘My role is increasingly about getting out of the way and allowing people to take the opportunities that are there,’ he observes.
Eversheds Sutherland executive partner Ian Gray comments: ‘It’s been another big year of change at Network Rail as it looks to change and reorganise its legal functions. Stuart just never stands still and is always looking out for the next thing to improve in his legal function. He’s completely focused on improving efficiency; a lot of GCs say they want to improve efficiency, but Stuart actually does.’
Mark Gregory
Rolls-Royce
Team size: 70
Major law firms used: Eversheds Sutherland, Slaughter and May
‘A lot of law firms talk a good talk, but it can be quite difficult to distinguish between them.’
‘It’s been a hell of a busy year,’ reflects Rolls-Royce GC Mark Gregory. The back end of a global criminal investigation, massive internal restructuring programmes and high-profile issues with its Trent 1000 aircraft engine have clearly dominated the in-house legal function’s workload. But on top of that, Gregory has been charged with improving efficiency.
‘The challenge we have is to work out how we can pull efficiency levers like automation, outsourcing and commoditisation so that we’re empowering non-lawyers to do a lot of the tasks. As part of the group restructuring programme, we’re spending a lot of time looking at ways of working to make sure we’re fit for the future.’
Gregory has been with the company for more than 13 years and was appointed GC in late 2015, replacing Robert Webb QC. He has a team of 70 lawyers across the globe and is responsible for 11 different functions in the group, including legal, company secretary, ethics and compliance, internal audit, risk management and export control. He is also an executive team member and sits on the board.
In mid-2018, Rolls-Royce announced a two-year restructuring programme affecting 4,600 jobs. A few months earlier, the company had said it would simplify its business from five to three core business units based around civil aerospace, defence and power systems. As a result, the company sold its commercial marine division to Nordic tech company Kongsberg Gruppen for £500m, subject to regulatory approval. It also offloaded its L’Orange fuel injector business for €700m.
Gregory has in turn reorganised his team, having a chief counsel for each of the three businesses and a shared service centre for subject-matter expertise. He is now focusing his attention on outsourcing and automating more processes, as well as refreshing his legal panel. Gregory is involved in the Law Society-sponsored LawTech Delivery Panel, which is pushing for legal tech to grow in the same way fintech did in the UK.
‘The challenge I’ve been giving my law firms over the last year or so has been to make sure that they are collaborating with us so we can leverage their tech. A lot of law firms talk a good talk, but it can at times be quite difficult to distinguish between them.’
He adds: ‘We’re there to help run the business. That’s a broader task than just being the GC that pipes up whenever there’s a legal issue.’
Bronagh Kennedy
SEVERN TRENT
Team size: Ten
Major law firms used: Eversheds Sutherland
‘I’ve been trying to focus on what drives risk and what drives poor behaviour,’ Severn Trent group GC and company secretary Bronagh Kennedy says. ‘You’re not there to help people fix problems; you’re there to make sure they don’t happen in the first place.’
Kennedy joined the FTSE 100 water company in 2011, having previously been group GC and company secretary at Mitchells & Butlers. She oversees a team of ten, while also having two apprentices who have joined straight from school and one graduate as part of a wider company programme. She says the graduate and apprentice programmes help with a broader aim of moving the legal team away from being niche specialists to generalists. ‘The problem when lawyers come in from private practice is they’ve been trained to be quite specialist. We’re finding that having a mixture of people from private practice but also growing our own is working really well. They understand the strategic challenges of the business and therefore have a much better appreciation of risk.’
Severn Trent has a long-running sole adviser mandate with Eversheds Sutherland, operating on a five-year term until 2020. Kennedy says the arrangement provides cost certainty for Severn Trent, which has its income fixed by the regulator. Similarly, it provides Eversheds with predictable cashflow, although Kennedy is increasingly expecting extra value support, such as training and market insight.
Recent key projects include the acquisition of Dee Valley Water, which required redrawing the boundaries between English and Welsh water companies, as well as the £120m purchase of renewable energy business Agrivert.
Eversheds executive partner Ian Gray comments: ‘Bronagh is a very experienced GC who has been at FTSE 100 companies for 20 years. She has a complete mastery of her brief, and she’s completely on top of everything and has a strong projection of where she’s going. When she’s happy we really know about it and when she’s not happy we really know about it, and we like that about her.’
Andrew Fleming
BRITISH AIRWAYS
Team size: 28
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Baker McKenzie, DLA Piper, Linklaters, Slaughter and May
‘Taking the head of legal role at 31 was career-defining.’
Andrew Fleming was just 31 years old when he landed the head of legal role at British Airways following its £5bn merger with Spanish carrier Iberia in 2011. His tenure leading a 28-strong in-house legal team has seen him face everything from industrial action and a high-profile data incident, to the closure of its largest pension scheme and the acquisition of landing slots at Gatwick Airport.
Linklaters partner Tom Cassels says Fleming brings an impressive gravitas to his role despite his relatively young age: ‘BA throws up a lot of issues in a real glare of publicity because everyone feels they have a stake in it – it says “British” on the label and we all have a relationship with it. I know his team has resolved a number of issues this year very satisfactorily and in a way that has delivered a lot of value to the business.’
The most high-profile recent issue was last year’s data breach that affected hundreds of thousands of customers who made bookings on the company’s website and mobile app. Fleming and his team are continuing to deal with the fallout.
BA was a relatively early adopter of e-billing in late 2011 and Fleming says it has transformed the way the in-house legal function manages its budget: ‘We do a lot of work in-house for a small team but do spend a significant amount on external providers each year. We’ve now got the minutest detail on what we’ve spent with whom.’
He says he inherited a good team in 2011 but believes a strong in-house function is built around the people you recruit and creating an environment for them to be able to stretch themselves. His responsibility has gradually broadened, taking on company secretarial in 2013, compliance in 2016 and data protection in 2017.
‘Taking the head of legal role at 31 was career-defining,’ he comments. ‘I had absolutely no preconceptions about how things should be done. It was an exponential learning curve and very exciting.’
Sarah Nelson Smith
WEWORK
Team size: 17 in London
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Covington & Burling, DLA Piper
‘The big pull factor to WeWork was the ability to be part of something that was so truly disruptive.’
A few years ago, Sarah Nelson Smith was dealing with documentaries about chickens. Now she is the Europe, Israel and Australia GC of fast-paced real estate disruptor WeWork.
She is newly installed at WeWork, joining in November 2018 from fast-food chain KFC (and parent Yum! Brands), where she was the European legal chief. Among her most interesting work at KFC was an internal debate as to whether to green-light The Billion Dollar Chicken Shop, a 2015 behind-the-scenes documentary on the chain’s practices. The drastic switch in legal work is testament to Nelson Smith’s adaptability as a GC. ‘I loved my time at KFC. The big pull factor to WeWork was the ability to be part of something that was so truly disruptive, and where I felt fully aligned with the company’s ethos and mission,’ Nelson Smith comments.
Founded in 2010, WeWork has found success using a simple model: it rents real estate from a landlord and then leases it on. It also has a heavy focus on providing modern and comfortable office environments. It hit the UK market in 2014 and continues to grow rapidly. ‘When I signed the contract in November, we had 11 lawyers. Now we have 17.’
With such fast growth comes high pressure, but as to be expected from WeWork, working at the company has its perks. She says: ‘It is high pressure, but it is also so positive and collaborative. My kids have been here to visit the office and didn’t want to leave, possibly because they wanted to play with some of the dogs who come to the office each day. One of the company mottos is “make a life, not just a living”.’
While it is early days in her new role, Nelson Smith is already making plans for the future. She admits the in-house legal function could benefit from an increased use of technology and argues it will provide long-term sustainability. ‘With a company growing this fast, you can’t expect to meet the demand placed on the legal team simply by continually hiring more people. That’s where strategic use of AI and alternative solutions become key.’
Ian Gray, executive partner of Eversheds Sutherland, says: ‘She came into Yum! Brands and completely changed the legal function there. She handled the chicken crisis with confidence and competency, and has come into WeWork and continues to innovate. She is the next generation of GC.’