Ditch the formalities

Dressing down: Metcash general counsel Greg Watson insists on less formal attire.

If you’re hoping to secure a brief for legal work from Metcash’s general counsel, Greg Watson, you need to jump at the chance to visit one of the warehouses and ditch the formal wear.

“Metcash has a ‘no tie’ dress policy for men and smart casual for women, which I point out to lawyers coming out to our office for the first time,” Watson says.

“If they comply, it’s a promising sign they’re listening and they want to embrace our culture and be part of the team. While it sounds trivial, if they arrive in a full suit and tie having had that briefing, that’s a bad start.

“It’s important to Metcash.”

The result is they’re unlikely to hear from Watson again.

“I expect our external firms to invest the time to understand the commercial imperatives of the business and realise a business’s reason for being is not to advance jurisprudence,” Watson says.

“We’re here to sell widgets so please come up with something that helps us make or sell more widgets while also ticking all the risk management and compliance boxes. Don’t rack up chargeable units on something that won’t assist the bottom line.”

Lawyers who master that art will be rewarded with Watson’s loyalty.

“If I find an individual who ticks all the boxes, I’m not fussed whether they have two or 200 other partners,” Watson says. “We’ve worked with a number of individuals whom we’ve continued to instruct when they’ve moved between firms. If they’ve successfully invested in understanding our business, the fact they’re in a different building with a new email address doesn’t mean they’re a different lawyer.”

Watson, nominated as commercial lawyer of the year at Australian Corporate Lawyers Association’s 2011 Australian In-house Lawyer Awards, says that for the first time in a long time it’s a buyers’ market.

“Lawyers [used to act as though they] were almost doing you a favour by doing your work and then the global financial crisis came along and the shoe was on the other foot,” he says.

“All of a sudden we have firms knocking on our door offering free seminars, asking if they can help.”

This increase in demand may have as much to do with Metcash’s growth as any dynamic in the legal profession. When Watson joined Metcash in April 2005 it had a market capitalisation of $1 billion, which has now tripled. The acquisition of Mitre 10 and Franklins and associated litigation has generated multiple millions of dollars in legal fees. Challenging the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s decision to block the Franklins’ purchase has been particularly lucrative for lawyers.

What’s also changed, however, is the company’s reliance on the in-house team. Metcash employs 12 full-time lawyers who Watson says are valued by the business.

“Our commercial colleagues have a perception that we’ve worked very hard to earn that they get better value from the in-house team than they do from external guys,” he says.

“In the 10 years I’ve worked in-house, the corporate world has become aware of what you can get from an internal lawyer who wants to be a full partner to the business.”

BRW

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