After starting his career as a litigator at a London law firm, Sam quickly realised that private practice wasn’t for him. Fast forward a few decades and Sam’s CV to date includes senior GC and Co Sec roles at major brands including PZ Cussons, Princes and Müller UK & Ireland.
Sam also served as a Member of Council and Chairman of the Governance, Nominations and Ethics committee of The University of Salford from 2015 to 2024.
We spoke with Sam about the evolution of in-house leadership, creating genuine business value through legal teams, balancing legal risk with commercial pressures and why AI presents an opportunity for lawyers to become even more embedded within their organisations.
How can legal teams create genuine value for an organisation?
Integration in the business is the key. Legal functions that exist in a bubble simply cannot deliver the value an organisation expects and deserves. A great in-house legal team needs to be present and visible across the organisation and not viewed as a separate, bolted-on function.
We can add the most value by operating in the grey areas and ambiguities that exist in every organisation. However well organisations are structured, they – and the environment they exist in – are often messy and complex. The best in-house legal teams are those that bring simplicity and understanding in times, and areas, of uncertainty.
How has your approach to leadership evolved throughout your career?
Like most lawyers, I’d never had any formal training in leadership. Most of my training had been in technical legal skills, which of course was necessary, but left me largely unprepared for the step up into my first senior role.
I remember going on a leadership course out in the middle of North Wales early in my role as a leader. For one of the exercises, we were packed off as a team to navigate wild terrain and gather various items. Embedded in my team was a facilitator from the training provider. After a few hours, the facilitator took me to one side to take stock of our progress.
“Who in your team has got the compass?” He asked me.
“I have it,” I said.
“Who’s keeping track of time?”
“I am.”
“And who’s carrying the items you’ve collected so far?”
“That would be me, too.”
His point was clear - that leadership isn't about doing or knowing everything yourself, it's about bringing the best out of your team. That lesson stuck with me.
Later, at PZ Cussons, I managed the sustainability team. Everyone on the team knew a lot more about sustainability than I did but, by then, I recognised that my role as a leader was to provide direction as to where we were going and the resources which they needed, enabling and empowering them to come up with the answers.
How do you approach decisions where legal risk and commercial pressure conflict?
That conflict is real but, equally, I don’t think the role of the in-house lawyer is simply to reduce risk but rather to distinguish between good risk and bad risk.
Good risk is where the potential returns are big enough to justify taking it. As a lawyer in a commercial business, you have to accept that there is no reward without risk – and no business without reward.
Maintaining this mindset helps you avoid an allergic reaction to risk and shows internal clients that you understand the principles of business and your organisation’s goals. Where a plan may take the organisation through murky legal territory or an ethical minefield, see it as your job to speak up and, where possible, plot a different course to reach the intended outcome.
How you succeed in this will come down largely to communication skills. Colleagues will react badly if you simply say they cannot pursue a given course of action. Explain the potential consequences and work with management to find an alternative way through. If that involves two or three steps rather than a single big jump, the business is likely to be more open to your input than a straight “Legal says no.”
In the early stages of an in-house legal career, it’s natural to build in layers of protection to ensure you’re never wrong. However, as you progress, you learn that simply not making mistakes is not a real measure of success. That’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe and leaving precious opportunities on the table.
What’s the greatest misconception about leading a legal function in a complex organisation?
When I started in my first leadership role, I imagined that my employer would see me as a fabulous success if we just gave good legal advice. Of course, it turned out that’s only a small part of leading an in-house legal team. While most organisations don't really understand the difference between good legal advice and bad legal advice, they will know if you’re a good or bad team member. They’ll notice, for example, if you’re building good relationships, communicating effectively and demonstrating the value that you and your team add. Or failing to do those things.
So, my advice is to project legal to your colleagues in language they understand and in a way that’s not purely defined by the quality of your technical advice. Once you achieve that, the difficult conversations become much easier to manage.
How must legal teams evolve to stay relevant?
Legal teams have a great opportunity to thrive in the AI world. It’s critical we can find ways to spend time with people in all corners of the business so that we know where we can add most value. AI enables us to create systems to automate repetitive, yet necessary, legal tasks and free up time to spend at the sharp end of our organisations where we can use our human skills of observation and empathy.
How do you unwind away from work?
I’m a big reader, particularly of histories and biographies. I play a lot of tennis and, as a Crystal Palace fan, am currently living the dream following the club’s win in the UEFA Conference League!