General counsel urged for greater action in fight to keep costs down

General counsel need to take a more aggressive stance with their legal advisers as they deal withgrowing pressure to cut costs as a result of the global economic crisis, according to leading company lawyers.In-house legal teams need to be more upfront with external advisers when coming to fee agreements as they deal with rising cost bases. This was the message from some of Europe's leading in-house and private practice lawyers gathered at Legal Week's Corporate Counsel Forum in Lausanne, Switzerland last month (23-24 September). Hammonds partner Mike Henley said: "We need communication on how we work with clients. It is important to provide help and support through the credit crunch. There needs to be harder conversations between the parties. It is important to long-term relations with law firms."The event, chaired by InBev's chief legal officer and communications director Sabine Chalmers and Standard Chartered Bank's head of legal and compliance, Middle East, Pakistan, Africa and Europe, David Brimacombe, also saw delegates discussing how they can help guide their companies through the credit crunch. Wolseley group company secretary and general counsel Richard Shoylekov said: "There has been a change in attitude in most businesses - there is no longer a focus on growth. It is important to balance short-term reform while keeping one eye on the horizon."Lawyers play a useful role in guiding their business colleagues through uncertain times. In-house involvement in redundancy programmes is a good example."General counsel including Boston Consulting Group's Jeremy Barton also used the event to reiterate calls for companies to adopt a US model and give general counsel greater influence at board level. However, InBev's Chalmers argued that even without boardroom representation legal teams can still play a bigger role in helping to lead the business. She said: "In some companies the board can only rubber-stamp decisions. The real discussions happen one level down. In these structures, direct access to the board is not as important... There is no one size-fits-all approach."

October 02, 2008 at 01:51 AM

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