In 2001 Malcolm Wood left private practice at Burness to take a newly created in-house role as Head of Legal Services at financial giant Standard Life. Here he talks about how he approached that role and offers some advice to anyone facing a similar challenge.

Like many private practice solicitors, Malcolm Wood had never seriously considered moving in-house until the perfect opportunity was offered to him. As a partner at Burness for 16 years, he expected to see out his career heading up the firm’s corporate department from his Clydesdale Plaza office in the heart of Edinburgh’s financial district.
However, in April 2001 his career was set to take a radical turn when he was offered the chance to take up the newly created position of Head of Legal Services at Standard Life.
“I had never considered going in-house before as I was really enjoying myself at Burness,” he says. “I liked the partnership and the work was flowing so I fully expected to be there until I retired. The only reason I made the move was because this particular position came up. I asked myself how many positions like the one I was being offered come up in Scotland and I knew the answer was very few indeed. I knew that if I didn’t at least investigate the opportunity that I would regret it afterwards.”
After investigating the offer Wood finally made the move in-house during April 2001 and began to get his first taste of working in-house after enjoying a considerable career in private practice, which had also seen him spend time at Brodies and Herbert Smith in London, where he been involved in one of the UK’s first privatisations of the onshore oil and gas interests of British Gas.
Wood reflects: “When I joined Standard Life the company was going through a period of real change. The company had been in a very steady growth pattern for a long time, but with the significance of things like Fred Woollard’s demutualisation campaign, which I had advised them on during my time at Burness, legal matters had moved up the agenda pretty rapidly. The position I took as Head of Legal Services was a newly created one. That meant that there was a history where legal services were perhaps not quite as visible within the company as I would have expected.”
One of Wood’s first key tasks on arrival at Standard Life’s impressive Lothian Road HQ was to raise the profile of the legal services team and its purpose within the business in the eyes all the company’s stakeholders.
“One of the first practical things I did was to change the name of the legal team. When I arrived the legal function was known as the legal sub division, which I didn’t think sounded very dynamic. So we changed the name to Legal Services.
“Another thing we did early on was to spend quite a lot of time getting the message out to people across the business what value the legal team could add. That turned out to be a real win-win situation because once the lawyers started getting the good message out they received more respect and recognition, which in turn made them feel more confident about the value they were adding to the business and they delivered an even better service.
“I think coming in from outside put me in a good position to make this change as I had seen it work in private practice. In private practice you cannot expect all your clients to know what you are doing and how you are adding value for them through telepathy, you have to tell them and that is the same within an organisation like Standard Life.”
Another change Wood instigated was to make the career progression within the organisation more definable, as he explains: “In any large organisation people tend to get promoted by reference to their skill at management. But while management skills are obviously important in a business not everybody has those particular skill sets. What I felt we needed to do here was create a path of progression for people who were really good at the technical side of things, but whose interests weren’t really in management.
“We also introduced some different kinds of training and gradually we found that the work that the legal services department was getting involved with became more diverse and of a higher value. As a result the people within the department found that their work became more interesting.”
Since joining and introducing a new legal culture to the Standard Life business, which in itself has undergone immense changes in recent years, Wood’s role has also changed. In 2004 he took on the responsibilities of Company Secretary and General Counsel for Standard Life and at the beginning of 2006 a new structure was put in place which saw Simon Burns take over Wood’s role as Head of Legal Services in the UK. Others head up the legal functions in Canada and Germany, Standard Life’s biggest markets outside the UK. These managers now report into Wood on any significant legal issues and in turn Wood ensures that the board has access to all the relevant legal information to enable them to drive the business forward.
Wood is candid that his time working at Standard Life has challenged him more than he has ever been challenged in his career, particularly during the run up to the company’s IPO. So, does he have any advice to offer to any solicitor faced with heading up an in-house legal team for the first time? Of course he does.
“The main advice I would give anyone taking on a role like this is to get around and see as many people within the business as you possibly can. Also, try to understand as well as you can, and as quickly as you can, what the business is trying to achieve. You have to have a solid understanding of the business as you can’t provide a legal service of the best quality until you know what the businesses aims are.
“Then you have to find out what the business wants from its lawyers, or what it thinks it wants from its lawyers. An issue that is relevant to both in-house and private practice is that you cannot always expect people, not matter how senior they are, to ask the right questions of their lawyers. I feel that in a large organisation it is always important for your lawyers to challenge what they are asked to do, even in a hierarchical organisation. That is not always easy to do, but the best relationships and the best results come out of being given the confidence to challenge others within the business, regardless of their position.”