FEATURE | interview >>
“We want lawyers to be independent from the business. It is important to remember that while the legal team is always available to facilitate the business and deliver commercial risk solutions, the legal team should protect the bank’s franchise and manage legal risk without any interference or pressure from the business” Jiun Yoong Lim
Photography by Thilo Pulch
RBS
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perspective. “We want lawyers to be independent from the business,” he explains. “It is important to remember that while the legal team is always available to facilitate the business and deliver commercial risk solutions, the legal team should protect the bank’s franchise and manage legal risk without any interference or pressure from the business.”
External advisors
The Australian RBS legal team has nine members and will look to add two further lawyers early in 2011. It’s a small team so many external lawyers are engaged to work either directly or indirectly on RBS work. This means that managing external relationships is a critical part of Lim’s role. He recently reviewed the RBS Australian legal panel with a view to not only providing better value for RBS, but also for the law firms. “We decided to be fair to the law firms – there is no point in putting firms on our panel if we know that at this stage, we would not be giving them any work,” he says. The legal team first set out a list of law firms based on their expertise and quality of work, and then approached the different parts of the business and asked them to indicate the firms each section preferred to use. This information was then used to form a general panel, and also a niche panel for specialist areas. Part of the aim of this process was not to raise expectations on the part of the firms as to what kind of work they will be receiving. “We realise that when you put firms on a panel, there is an expectation they will be getting work,” Lim says. “We treasure that relationship and the best way forward is to be honest – if there are certain areas where a firm is unlikely to get work, we will tell them. That way they are aware of the areas where the business is not yet comfortable in using them and they can work on improving their offering in those areas.” RBS also has a global panel as well as panels for discrete markets such as Hong Kong or Japan. Lim acknowledges the possibility of creating a single Asia-Pacific panel, but points out that the result may ultimately be a distinction without a difference. “In Australasian Legal Business ISSUE 9.02