SIOBHAN MORIARTY IS GENERAL COUNSEL FOR DIAGEO PLC, A LONdon-based alcoholic beverages company. Moriarty received a law degree at University College, Dublin, attended law school at the Law Society of Ireland, and trained at a Dublin law firm. She worked at private law firms in Dublin and London, principally as a corporate lawyer with Clifford Chance for seven years. In 2013, she was appointed GC at Diageo. Diageo is a public company, and has its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange. Diageo's products are sold in more than 180 countries. Brands include Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, J&B, Buchanan's and Windsor whiskies; Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas; Captain Morgan, Baileys, Don Julio, Tanqueray and Guinness. Beyond the more typical legal functions, Moriarty's role as GC incorporates "leadership and management of the global legal function, the company secretariat and share schemes teams, corporate security and brand protection, as well as my role as a member of the executive committee of the company and an adviser to the board of directors," she explained.

LEGAL TEAM: The legal function at the company includes over 300 people. Of these, 140 positions are staffed by lawyers, split between in-market lawyers—who are more generalists—and those in the global function, which includes both generalists and specialists in M&A, treasury, IP and antitrust and compliance. She notes that 55 percent of the positions are held by women. The global legal team is mostly based in London. She works with seven senior lawyers who have regional responsibilities, and manages the market-based legal teams and global responsibilities with the global director of corporate security.

OUTSIDE COUNSEL: The company may require the use of outside counsel "for major matters and projects—e.g. material litigation or M&A transactions," Moriarty says. "We look at the total cost of legal—internal and external spend—end-to-end, by reference to benchmarks, to ensure that we optimize the cost to the company, and select our use of external counsel from our retained network of preferred law firms across the world," she explains. "We regularly review our panel of relationship law firms, by reference to objective criteria."