An interview with David Morgan, General Counsel & Company Secretary at Warburtons in UK.
How would you describe the state of the GC Community in your region?
The GC community in the North West is healthy, co-operative, full of talent and engaged. The ability to build connections has been aided by WorkGroup Legal – introduced by Peter Daniels a couple of years ago (he is on to his third event in Manchester). This brings together around 50 Heads of Legal / General Counsel from the North. In addition, many law firms host meals for GCs / Heads of Legal to help build connections and share thoughts (I’ve certainly seen this through Eversheds and Hill Dickinson). Legal recruitment in the North is also a relatively small circle (BCL Legal, Douglas Scott, Sacco Mann, etc) and they also support the community through the legal seminars and updates that they help to arrange.
How has it changed since you first moved in-house?
The biggest change to the in-house community over the nearly 2 decades I have been in house is (1) the mushrooming of the number of in-house lawyers, (2) the breadth of some General Counsel roles and (3) the growth of consultants / advisors / developers looking to offer solutions to in-house legal teams. What seemed to once have been the duopoly of Practical Law and Lexis Nexis has now evolved to a host of organisations from Summize, SpotDraft, Lawcadia, Johnson Hana, Vario, AG Integrate, Konexo, etc.
Why is expanding your network important to you?
I’m most interested in:
– Which law firms and law firm partners / senior associates do people work with (pros and cons)
– What software or other solutions are people using and do they work
– What alternative legal solution providers might be proving useful
– And some general benchmarking on team size/cost to serve /organisation approaches to compliance
I think I’ve heard much too much about KPIs, commerciality, business partnering/strategic alignment, adding value, ethics, being at the table and doing more for less. I find some of this to be too much of an echo chamber of noise that does little in practice to drive personal and team impact.
What kinds of connections or discussions would be most valuable to you?
I’m interested in selectively expanding my network where is can be useful in the first four bullet points in my previous answer (though I’d also be interested in building the network out to Chairs of business, CEOs, MDs, CFOs – so that I have a broader perspective on what is important to them and what they think about when leading and managing businesses).
