1988 Partner, McMillan Binch, Toronto 1996 Partner and Partner, Shearman & Sterling, Toronto 1999 Partner, Shearman & Sterling, Singapore 2003 Partner, Shearman & Sterling, London 2017 General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Anglo American Anglo American – Key Facts Team Size 70 External Legal Fees Over £10 million per year Privileged consultants Shearman & Sterling, Linklaters Stabilise the department and provide consistent service, Anglo American and Exigent combined process mapping, legal fee analysis, opportunity analysis to achieve greater efficiency and the creation of a dedicated on-site team at Anglo American. They did so in an atmosphere of collegial experiences. «There was no well-thought-out strategic vision,» Stott admits. «While there may have been a tendency to panic for many, we both knew we might not get it right at first.» He credits Lester`s work in reshaping his team in South Africa after the 2016 downsizing as an impact on the strategy pursued by the broader internal department. As the South African team had to do the same amount of work with far fewer employees, it dealt with the outsourcing of legal processes, which was not particularly developed in that country. To cut back on spending, you first need to know what you`re spending and where – but Lester didn`t know. «No one knew what we were spending on external consultants. We had to get hold of it. Exigent has developed a customized legal expense tool, Inform, initially for South Africa, but has now been deployed in all anglo-American global jurisdictions. This allowed Lester to understand what activities Anglo American had paid for. It began to introduce more rigour in scoping and invoicing and conducted a convergence exercise that reduced the number of external legal counsel from 75 to 14; Spending has fallen by 35% in three years. Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive Officer of Anglo American, said: «We look forward to welcoming Richard Price as Group General Counsel, a key role that provides strategic and business insights into our decision-making processes while being part of Anglo American`s risk management as a whole.
He knows us and our industry well as he has provided legal advice on a number of complex issues and transactions, including in South Africa. Richard will lead our global legal team after Ben Keisler decided to retire this year after 32 years at Anglo American. On behalf of the entire management team, I would like to thank Ben for his dedication, leadership and, most importantly, sound judgment, and wish him a happy and safe retirement. Overall, Price says the response to the survey was positive, but the company wanted to see more value. It also showed an imbalance in some areas between what the legal team was able to handle on its own and what was outsourced. There was obviously a cost justification for bringing in more work internally, but it was also about providing more effective advice in certain areas. Added to this was the focus on the work of the 70-person legal team – spread over a core basis in Johannesburg and London, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Australia and Singapore – and smarter work. They motivated external legal providers to work with OPLs to align with reorganization efforts and entered into long-term agreements to encourage collaboration between their suppliers. Exigent has provided project management know-how in optimizing legal services. Shortly before Richard Price joined Anglo American as group general counsel and secretary of the company, the legal team was cut in half. However, this did not imply a reduction in the amount of work. Expectations have remained the same.
Anna helps bridge the gap between IT and law, with a proven track record in providing sophisticated solutions for materials management, CLM, process and document automation for all market sectors. Anna has assembled and led legal engineering teams in several jurisdictions, is an experienced corporate and business lawyer and a qualified mba management consultant. The reorganization of the trials led to a cultural shift within Anglo American that went beyond the legal department, as well as within the johannesburg legal community. «Such innovations had not yet arrived in South Africa. It`s not like someone else did this rigorous audit of external spending,» says Lester. «Individual lawyers felt that we were attacking their billing practices. The team has always been structured around geography, but now includes a number of specialists in areas such as mergers and acquisitions, litigation and trading. This change began with Keisler, but has recently been accelerated. Price comments, «These things take a while.
There is obviously outsourcing to external law firms, there is a certain category of work on outsourcing firms for legal processes, there are areas of help from the company with models and standardization processes so that they can do the work themselves without having to resort to the legal department. When Anglo American, a global mining company, acquired a majority stake in DeBeers in 2014, the legal department became a merger of four previously separate departments.