Charlotte first joined RPC in 2010 as a Senior Associate having spent 11 years at Wragge & Co LLP (now Gowling WLG).
In 2013 Charlotte began her in-house journey, which saw her hold senior legal roles at Johnson Controls and CBRE before taking up the GC and Head of Legal roles at global payroll solutions provider, CloudPay. In September 2025, Charlotte rejoined RPC as a partner in the Employment, Engagement and Equality team.
How can in-house lawyers position themselves as strategic partners when working with external counsel?
When you're in-house, your world is spinning constantly, and you forget that your legal advisers aren't part of that spinning world.
For this reason, it really helps to build strategic business relationships. Identify who you rely on for crucial advice and have regular meetings with them. Use these meetings to ensure your external counsel fully understand your organisation and what its aims and priorities are for the coming two to three years.
If possible, share with them where they sit within those objectives in terms of the support you need and the budgetary implications. This way, your advisers’ understanding of how they can help you will deepen, enabling them to evolve from a service provider to strategic partner.
It also helps to involve other leaders across the organisation in these relationships. I would often introduce my external counsel to the CFO and Head of HR, for example, as these department heads gave the external lawyers a slightly different perspective to mine and broadened their picture of our business.
What’s your advice to in-house counsel on building relationships with their law firm counterparts?
Get to know each other. Bring those counterparts into your circle and get to learn what their individual strengths and weaknesses are and what the law firms they represent do best.
One of the great advantages of having trusted external counsel embedded in your organisation is that they pick up on the pace of change in your operations. What was true in Q1 can be ancient history in Q2.
In relationships held at arm’s length, knowledge relating to organisational change can easily get lost or miscommunicated. In close relationships it gets frequently shared, enabling external counsel to help you plan for adjustments in corporate strategy and short-term objectives.
Remember, as lawyers, they’re legally obliged to keep what you tell them confidential, so be as open as you can with them.
What, for you, were the three biggest cultural challenges when moving from private practice to in-house?
In a law firm, no matter how close your relationship with the client is, you will always be one step removed from full immersion in the business and ultimately commercial decisions relating to risk are made by the client based on your advice. Once in-house, you very quickly realise that you’re part and parcel of the business and it can be very tempting to get involved in everything. So, while it's a privilege to have this vantage point, it can also be a bit of a curse.
As lawyers, we're taught to be logical problem solvers. I felt a huge sense of responsibility and found myself wanting to put things right across multiple functions of the business simultaneously. The switch from fee-earner and new business winner to back-office cost centre also takes some getting used to, especially in an era of increased scrutiny on spending. As an in-house lawyer, you have to justify how you spend your budget, so you can’t use external counsel for everything.
And this led into the third big challenge, which is to become a bit of a generalist – or at least to know something about a lot of different things. In private practice, you tend to specialise in your chosen area of law, say employment or M&A. In-house, unless you are part of an enormous legal team, you’re expected to know at least something about many different areas – often being asked to give your views in a very rapid and fast paced environment.
How do you manage competing demands and maintain balance?
Through communication and prioritisation. When everyone wants everything immediately, we need to help them understand what the real priorities are. Honest two-way communication is critical here. Does someone simply want this thing off their desk because they’re going to be out for a few days or is it a real emergency? Talk to everyone who is making demands on you and then prioritise ruthlessly. Then, be ready to justify your decisions.
What’s your advice to a private practice lawyer making the move to in-house?
Be realistic about what you can achieve. You can't fix everything. It'll become very apparent to you that there are lots of things you'd like to try and fix but you can’t – and nor should you. Much as we’re hardwired to help people and solve problems, taking on too much is self-defeating.
Also, don’t be shy about asking for what you need. When the business is making big plans, you’ll start to work out what the cost to legal is. Reducing staff numbers is a great example as this is usually a cost-cutting exercise. The business must understand, however, that it involves legal expenditure. Be ready to put your boxing gloves on and fight for the resources you need.
How do you relax?
I have an elderly dog, and I love going out running with her. However, as she gets older, the runs are becoming more like walks, which isn’t great for my training regime.
I also do a lot of charitable work, mainly in local grassroots sport. This started when my children were young. Now they’ve grown up and I’m still there! I enjoy it, as my work as a lawyer – and especially my in-house experience – helps me stay calm when others may be panicking.
Both my work and my voluntary roles have taught me that it's rare that something will be perfect or go according to the plan – and that's certainly something I had to get used to as an in-house lawyer.