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Legal Leaders: In-house challenges - new technology, new ethics and new boundaries

In collaboration with Thomson Reuters this programme focuses on a different theme relevant to the role and career of in-house lawyers.

  • Event date: 22 November 2023 02:00 PM
  • Event type: Webinar
  • Duration: 1 hour
  • Provided by: The Centre for Legal Leadership and Thomson Reuters

Each event runs for one hour from 2.00 pm and includes a presentation by two prominent in-house lawyers together with a Q&A session.

If change is the only constant, in-house lawyers have seen an awful lot of it come their way in recent years as they have navigated an array of financial, political, environmental and pandemic events that have impacted their organisations, regardless of sector.
In responding to these challenges, in-house lawyers have had to reconsider their role and sometimes change the ways in which they operate, their interaction with their clients and stakeholders, and generally, how they best support themselves and their organisations in the face of rapidly changing circumstances.

In this session, we will look at the extent to which some of these changes have been temporary, borne of necessity, and which have, or will, become part of business as usual for in-house lawyers. We will focus on the extent to which ethical responsibilities have changed (if at all), the scope of the in-house lawyers’ role and the impact of new technology.

Our two regular presenters are both experienced, senior in-house lawyers well versed in dealing with many of these matters, who will speak about their personal experiences in handling some of these challenges.   

Our guest presenters for this session are:

Sonya Branch
Sonya Branch is Executive Director at the Bank of England and the General Counsel for the Bank’s Legal Directorate. Sonya was previously an Executive Director/Board member at the Competition and Markets Authority and the Office of Fair Trading. She has also held several leadership roles across Whitehall, including at the Cabinet Office and DEFRA.

Prior to leadership roles across Government, Sonya was a Partner at the global law firm Clifford Chance LLP. Sonya was listed in the Cranfield School of Management/EY Women to Watch 2022. In addition to her work with Target Ovarian Cancer, she is a Trustee and member of the Audit and Finance Committee of the national Charity, NowTeach.

Richard Hill
Richard Hill is an experienced senior executive and legal leader with a focus on the energy transition. He is General Counsel for Downstream and Renewables at Shell, overseeing a global organisation of two hundred legal staff supporting Shell’s retail, lubricants, chemicals, low carbon and renewable energy businesses. 

Before joining Shell he was a Partner and Head of Asia Disputes in a major international law firm and was recognised as a leading practitioner by the main legal directories, having appeared as counsel and advocate or as arbitrator in over a hundred international disputes involving a wide range of commercial and state entities. He has written widely on dispute resolution and is co-editor of a treatise on international arbitration.

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