Efficiency by Technology
In an exclusive roundtable hosted by The Lawyer and Consilio, lawyers share their secrets to winning the ‘more for less’ debate in the boardroom.
Preview: How do FTSE 100 companies manage legal spend? According to the companies’ top lawyers, it is a large-scale balancing act between creating value for money and effective horizon scanning for future risk. Barclays general counsel of operations and technology Rob Dinning; Shell head of legal and director Michael Coates; Pearson assistant GC Vicky Lockie; Tesco Stores litigation and investigations legal director Kay Majid; and Sky UK director of legal Fiona McLaren were among the line-up of 14 top in-house lawyers at the roundtable hosted by The Lawyer’s deputy editor Matt Byrne. The average number of lawyers in FTSE 100 companies attending the roundtable varied significantly from eight to 700 globally, putting the average size of a FTSE legal team at 163. Despite this, their problems are mostly universal. Many of these GCs are facing demands to cut legal spend and increase value to the business, reflecting the trend in the wider market. “Constantly we are asked to reduce our legal spend,” BT’s M&A chief counsel Rachel Canham says. “This year we got a cut of 5 per cent. As lawyers move on within the organisation and elsewhere, we are still expected to deliver the same level of work. It’s challenging, but it’s about putting together a business case for those resources.”
This article originally appeared in the March 20, 2017 edition of The Lawyer.