Profile – Page 2 – The In-House Lawyer

Charlotte Heiss: RSA

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How kidnap threats and vodka-fuelled due diligence helped shape the insurance giant’s group legal chief

Matt Wilson: Uber

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The EMEA legal head of one of the world’s most valuable private companies on sticking along for the ride

Martin Cook: Funding Circle

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The London office of peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle is exactly what you would expect from one of the UK’s largest and most high-profile fintech businesses.

Julie Smyth: BAE Systems Air

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‘My husband has virtually no understanding of what I do,’ admits BAE Systems Air chief counsel Julie Smyth. ‘He thinks I sit in meetings all day.’

Profile: Richard Price, Anglo American

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Shortly before Richard Price went in-house as group general counsel and company secretary at Anglo American, the legal team’s headcount was cut in half. This was not coupled with a reduced workload, however. Expectations remained the same.

Daniel Toner, Spire Healthcare

Daniel Toner had done his research. Before an interview to become head of legal at Bupa Hospitals in 2006, he noticed the company had shifted some of its non-hospital assets to a new division. At the interview he asked, tongue-in-cheek, whether Bupa was selling its hospitals division. He was told: ‘Absolutely not. That would never …

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Sarah Nelson Smith, Yum! Brands

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In many ways it was ideal preparation. Before embarking on a legal career, Sarah Nelson Smith took a post-law school gap year working as a holiday rep in the popular Greek retreat of Halkidiki. It was an eye-opening experience, figuratively and literally, welcoming holidaymakers at unholy hours and dealing with bizarre questions and gripes.

Rushad Abadan, Standard Life Aberdeen

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Rushad Abadan always knew what he wanted to do with his life. ‘I always fancied the idea of being a lawyer, even at school. I was one of those people who was very clear about their career path early on. Happily for me it worked out.’

Neil Murrin, trainline

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The train puns were inevitable, but it took longer than expected. Towards the end of my conversation with the general counsel of online ticket retailer trainline, Neil Murrin, he says: ‘It’s a matter of getting people to join us on that journey.’ And adds: ‘Getting people on the right track and all that.’

Mark Maurice-Jones, Nestlé

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Unusually for the current UK and Ireland general counsel of Swiss multinational and famed KitKat creator Nestlé, Mark Maurice-Jones’ career started in teaching. Armed with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Cambridge that he was unsure how to utilise, Maurice-Jones opted for a year-and-a-half-long stint in Hong Kong teaching maths, physics and chemistry. …

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Overview

The Legal 500 invites the best in-house counsel and GCs from some of Spain’s most prominent companies to the GC Summit Spain.

Through comprehensive panel discussions, Q&A sessions and the opportunity to meet and engage with fellow in-house and private practice legal luminaries, attendees will be able to hone their understanding of some of the major issues affecting them and the profession as a whole, and discuss these with their contemporaries. Put simply, the GC Summit Spain promises not only to be interesting and insightful, but also an event that will provide practical, tangible benefits to attendees.

The day’s panel discussions will see topics addressed and dissected by legal experts across four panels. Firstly, trademark and anti-counterfeiting efforts will be analysed, before the already-present but ever-growing challenge of cyber security will be unpacked. After this, collective actions and related recovery efforts will receive the attentions of an extremely well-qualified panel. The final panel is still to be confirmed, but also promises to be an engaging and insightful discussion.

These panels are specifically designed to give the audience the right knowledge to handle the challenges and opportunities presented by the corporate legal sector with the best legal strategies designed by experts of the most successful companies in the country.

Agenda

GC Summit Spain

1.15pm

Registration and light lunch

2.00pm

Opening remarks

2.15pm

Best practice benchmarks for trademarks and
anti-counterfeitingSafeguarding the intellectual property of their businesses is the foremost concern for many in-house counsel, particularly those at consumer goods companies with strong – and often-pirated – brands. The only way to ensure a successful response to these threats is through enacting a proactive strategy underpinned by robust internal processes. This panel will examine how to go about organizing in-house legal functions to protect their companies’ trademarked goods and intellectual property in the most effective way.

3.10pm

Cyber Security

There is scarcely a business functioning that does not consider cyber security threats to be a major concern. For large corporate entities, who often hold vast amounts of customer data on record, the risks are correspondingly larger and will undoubtedly assume greater importance for in-house legal operators as time goes on. How to best approach cyber security issues will be a matter for each individual company as best practices are honed over time, but this expert panel use their vast experience to analyse some of the major considerations for in-house counsel looking to safeguard their companies.

4.00pm

Coffee Break

4.15pm

Collective actions: maximising recovery opportunities

Collective actions can cause major losses to a company if the issue is not foreseen or mitigated against, or if recovery efforts are unsuccessful. Despite this, many in-house counsel are unfamiliar with these procedures and run the risk of failing to protect their companies when such a threat develops. This panel will provide practical insight into this less-understood aspect of corporate safeguarding.

5.10pm

Dispute Resolution

This panel will outline effective dispute resolution mechanisms, providing insight on a number of perennial questions for in-house counsel faced with a dispute process: Court or Arbitration? When and how to get management and commercial teams on board, and when to seek the advice of external counsel? All these questions and more will be the focus of this expert panel discussion.

6.00pm

Closing remarks

6.10pm

Drinks and canapes

Speakers

David R Scott, Managing partner, Scott & Scott

Vicente Marot, Partner, Andersen Tax & Legal

María González Gordon, IP & Digital Business Partner, CMS

GC Summer Reception UK 2021

6.30pm

Arrival and welcome drinks

7.15pm

Speeches

7.30pm

Drinks and networking

10.00pm

Event concludes

GC Powerlist: Denmark 2021

4.00pm

Arrival and welcome drinks

4.45pm

Speeches

5.00pm

Networking with drinks and canapes

7.00pm

Event concludes