Before I meet Siemens’ new UK general counsel Claire Carless, I know only a handful of disparate things about her. She was formerly legal director at Vodafone and, before that, legal manager at National Power. She is a trustee of LawTrust and passionate about pro bono. She likes chocolate and red wine (together) and she has two teenage sons, a dog, five chickens and six pigs.
I am interviewing Carless at Siemens’ UK headquarters, Sir William Siemens Square in Frimley, Surrey. Not until you’ve been there do you start to comprehend the size of the company – it employs 13,000 people across nearly 40 sites in the UK, and just less than 400,000 people worldwide.
