(L-R) Awards host AndrewRyan; Matt Newman, assistant GC, labour and dispute resolution,Sarah Draper, assistant GC, strategic transactions, Maaike De Bie,GC, Royal Mail Group; Rhiannon Van Ross, director ofstrategic projects, Legal Week
Finalists: Northern Trust (highly commended);Bazalgette Tunnel Limited (trading as Tideway); European Bank ofReconstruction and Development; The Board of the Pension ProtectionFund; Vodafone UK and Vodafone Group Enterprise.
Royal Mail Group's in-house team stood out in the legaldepartment innovation category for its efforts to transform theunit from a demand-led advisory function into an agile andstrategic business partner. That meant restructuring the legal teamand increasing its capacity and capabilities to limit its relianceon external counsel (it made a successful business case to hire 15new junior lawyers).
In addition, it encouraged business colleagues to makerisk-based decisions themselves through training, guides,self-service tools and contract standardisation. The team is alsotaking a more proactive approach to tackling fraud and recoveringdebt so it can reduce revenue leakage and help improve thebusiness's bottom line. That transformation is already deliveringresults: the team has recovered more than 2m in compensation thatthe business had previously written off as unrecoverable, pursuedunderpayments for services (including 1.3m in just two sites),saved almost half a million pounds through fraud detection andhelped the company with a strategic acquisition of a large USparcel handler, all while reducing spend against the department'sbudget.
They have become a real contributor to the business and theteam really understands what RMG is driving to achieve, said RoyalMail CFO Matthew Lester.
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