Sarah Morton: Managing counsel, global litigation, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Shell

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Having joined Shell in November 2011 from Debevoise & Plimpton, where she worked with former general counsel (GC) Peter Rees QC, Sarah Morton built the oil giant’s dedicated Europe, Middle East and North Africa (EMENA) litigation team from scratch, transferring four members from within Shell and recruiting the rest externally, to bring the team to 12 lawyers plus paralegals.

Aside from daily supervision of the EMENA team, Morton also sits on the leadership team for Shell’s litigation group, alongside eight other global heads, and is responsible for managing the EMENA region’s budget.

One nomination in support of Morton’s inclusion as a Rising Star says: ‘Considering her current role is the first she has carried out in-house, she has demonstrated real management and business acumen in how she has structured and run the team, creating a genuine sense of team spirit and can-do work ethos.

‘It is striking in our interactions with Sarah’s team, how consistently they approach litigation and the business requirements; no small feat considering the diversity of backgrounds and experience within that team.’

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Sarah Doherty: Legal counsel, Coca-Cola

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Sarah Doherty only completed her training contract at Coca-Cola in February 2012, having previously been a paralegal, but she has been quickly promoted to become the lead lawyer supporting Coca-Cola’s Great Britain and Ireland franchise operations team in London and Dublin.

Doherty’s area of responsibility includes negotiating high-value sponsorship agreements, such as the London Olympics 2012, FIFA World Cup 2014 and sponsorship of the London Eye. Doherty also deals with significant brand and product launches, including the launch in 2014 of SmartWater and Coca-Cola Life.

An intellectual property partner at one top 15 UK law firm comments: ‘Sarah isolates and deals with strategic issues with great skill and does so with a degree of sophistication that belies her experience. In order to handle the sheer volume of tasks she undertakes, she is extremely efficient but always great to work with. A real star.’

Doherty cites her biggest achievements as ‘playing a key role on major Coca-Cola sponsorships and activities such as the London Olympics in 2012, the extremely successful “Share a Coke” campaign and co-branding programmes for Diet Coke with international designers’.

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Jenny Lowe: Senior legal counsel, property and planning, Aggregate Industries

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In January 2012, with five years’ post-qualification experience, Jenny Lowe joined Aggregate Industries from McGrigors, taking on the role of senior counsel for property and planning. Lowe took responsibility for a large property portfolio and managing all property-related transactions, including sales and acquisitions, estate management, litigation, minerals issues, planning, renewable energy and regulatory.

Since joining Aggregate Industries, Lowe has sharply reduced legal spend on property-related matters.

One real estate partner at a top five UK law firm says: ‘The industry that Jenny works within is very male-dominated but she is more than able to enlist the support and respect of her internal clients, which is an absolute must for success. I can recommend Jenny without exception.’

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AIG

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  • EMEA general counsel: Chris Newby.
  • Group general counsel: Thomas Russo.
  • Team headcount: 1,200 in legal, regulatory and company secretarial, including 85 lawyers in Europe.

Talk of innovation is widespread among in-house legal teams but at AIG, the team genuinely stands out for delivering on a number of fronts with little fanfare despite being a company that has faced wrenching change in recent years.

Under the helm in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) of understated general counsel (GC) Chris Newby, the AIG legal team last year worked with McKinsey to implement a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) efficient working model, which it completed in December after a 14-week programme. While LSS will be rolled out across different departments and jurisdictions within AIG EMEA, legal is the only function to have completed it. Newby comments: ‘I put in a bid for why I thought it would be a good exercise for legal to do and the chief executive and New York legal supported the initiative.’

AIG’s legal team expects to save 20% of time currently spent on day-to-day tasks. They will ‘reinvest’ 10% of that time, while the other 10% will go towards helping AIG lawyers achieve a better work/life balance.

Having analysed where duplication of tasks exists, the team is rolling out European-wide standard operating procedures and Newby has already overseen an initiative to educate the AIG business about what the legal team does and introduce service-level agreements. These latest initiatives follow the introduction in 2013 of an independent ‘legal operations centre’ to obtain better metrics and performance indicators on external legal counsel. In the same year, Newby outsourced much of AIG’s volume work to Bond Dickinson, freeing up in-house lawyers to work on more strategic issues. He is currently trialling automated non-disclosure agreements in conjunction with Bond Dickinson.

Other key team members include deputy GC Europe, Kirsty Middleton, and UK head of legal, Neil Braakenburg.

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Areva

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  • Group general counsel: Coralie Bouscasse.
  • Team headcount: 134 lawyers.

The legal team at French nuclear giant Areva has been praised for its capabilities in ‘perhaps one of the largest and most complex cases in the history of international commercial arbitration’, namely its high-profile battle against Finnish energy consortium Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) over the construction of Olkiluoto 3, a nuclear power plant on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia in the municipality of Eurajoki in western Finland.

Having started in 2005, the plant is being built jointly by Areva and the German engineering giant Siemens, but delays and cost overruns at Olkiluoto 3 triggered a legal battle between the Areva-Siemens consortium and TVO. The Areva-Siemens consortium initiated arbitration proceedings in December 2008 and the dispute is now in arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce. In October last year, Areva-Siemens raised its claim against TVO to €3.5bn. Adding to the complexities was TVO filing its own claim against Areva-Siemens in September 2012 and it is seeking compensation from Areva-Siemens for financial losses stemming from delays in building the 1,600MW nuclear reactor.

‘Throughout that time, we have been consistently impressed by the Areva team’s ability to maintain a grasp over every one of the case’s many angles,’ says one partner at an international law firm. ‘Through its hard work, it made a seemingly unmanageable case function like clockwork. The level of sophistication the team has shown in this process is remarkable and worthy of much praise.’

General secretary Pierre Charreton, who served as GC until April 2014, is cited for his ‘cunning sense of strategy’. Team members also highlighted for their contribution include current legal chief, Coralie Bouscasse; Jens Bürkle, GC for nuclear activities; and senior legal counsel, Marion Saizeau.>

Concludes one partner: ‘Charreton stands as a prime example of excellent leadership. His presence and leadership are clearly the key ingredients that make Areva’s legal team run as seamlessly and effectively as it does.’

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EDF Energy

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  • Legal affairs director and company secretary: Guido Santi.
  • Team headcount: 47 (including support staff).

EDF Energy, one of the UK’s big six energy suppliers, has faced a tumultuous 2014 that highlighted how effectively the legal team operates in a politically sensitive industry. The team guided the business through the controversial investigation undertaken by Ofgem over its failure to handle consumer complaints efficiently between May 2011 and January 2012, which led to Ofgem levying a £3m fine. It further handled the process by which EDF obtained approval from the EU Commission for a state subsidy scheme that offers the company a set price for 35 years and cleared the way for the first nuclear reactors to be built in Britain for nearly 20 years.

The Brussels decision has paved the way for EDF Energy’s £16bn plan to construct Hinkley Point C in Somerset, south-west England. Other recent mandates for the team include calling on the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the supply and acquisition of energy in Britain, to identify areas where there is room for improvement in the interests of customers.

One partner at an international law firm says: ‘The team has clear focus, robust analysis and is collaborative – and with good team spirit at the same time. They have many strong characters in their business, yet handle the complex views expressed well.’

Cited in particular is legal affairs director, Guido Santi – who heads the team after moving from its Italian subsidiary four years ago – and Joe Souto, head of legal, customers.

‘Souto brings his deep knowledge of the industry to bear when faced with issues,’ the partner says.

The legal team was also tasked with reviewing its legal panel and has brought in structural change by replacing its current two-year system for a three-year term. Current UK panel firms include Baker & McKenzie, Herbert Smith Freehills, Pinsent Masons and Squire Patton Boggs, and the review is understood to mirror the 2012 process, with firms expected to agree fixed, discounted rates of up to 30%.

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Client profile: Neil Harnby, Royal Mail Group

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The postal service provider’s GC on unique legal work for an iconic British institution

As general counsel (GC) of Royal Mail, it would be fair to say that Neil Harnby’s corporate calendar over the last three years has been busier than most: a privatisation, a panel review, an inaugural corporate bond and an Ofcom-led Competition Act investigation are just some of the set-piece activities he has faced since joining the company in January 2012.

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Life During Law: Ciaran Carvalho, Nabarro

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I decided I wanted to be a lawyer aged 14. My parents’ friends were looking after me while my parents were away. They didn’t have children and wondered what to do with me – we started playing around with words during a game of Scrabble and after that it turned into a career talk because I was slightly argumentative. It struck a chord.

Titmuss Sainer & Webb was a real estate firm before forming an alliance with Dechert Price & Rhoads. The London property guys were worried because they wondered what a US firm would think of real estate. For me, it was an enormous benefit. It opened my eyes to international clients, the wider world, and not just domestic practice.

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Not always an ‘easy journey’: Q&A with Jonathan Scott, outgoing HSF senior partner

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Tom Moore talks to Jonathan Scott, senior partner and chair at Herbert Smith Freehills, about management, why he’s stepping down early and his worries over the reputation of English law.

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Why have you decided to leave your post early?

We get all the partners together once every two years and, if we ran the election after our November conference, there would be a preoccupation with who would be the next senior partner. If we’re going to spend that money getting everyone together, it’s not the best use of time to be talking about internal issues, so I made a decision, and I want to make it very clear that it was my decision with some internal resistance, that we would have the election beforehand.

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Life During Law: Jason Glover, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

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Clifford Chance (CC) was a great place to be in the 1990s. Geoffrey Howe deserves a huge amount of credit. He instilled that we were on a journey everyone else was seeking to replicate. The car was travelling fast. The concept of delivering that globalisation was a very powerful thing.

I didn’t have a plan but a lot of fortune. I took a view early on that there were hundreds of great technical lawyers and I would never be able to distinguish on just that.

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