Siobhan Moriarty, Group General Counsel of Diageo.

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."

TYPICAL DAY: "My career with Diageo has spanned 20 years and no two days are ever the same," she says, adding that often she travels globally. She highlights: achieving business goals; working on mergers and acquisitions; and providing leadership through proactive legal advice, support and risk management, and mitigation. "I think my most significant achievement in business has been to be an effective female leader in Diageo, and being able to contribute to and help progress our diversity and inclusion agenda," she says. "As Diageo's global GC, I sit on the Diageo executive committee and participate in all activities of the executive team and jointly lead the executive sponsorship of our global diversity and inclusion agenda, which is a real passion for me. I am an active sponsor of our women's network 'Spirited Women' and of our LGBT Rainbow Network, and in 2017 led the International Women's Day initiative #IWD2017 to make #BeBoldForChange a rallying cry inside and outside Diageo. I kicked it off with an external panel event hosted by Baileys, with inspirational female leaders from the worlds of business, media and tech and hosted internal events at our London office."

LAST BOOK READ: She is currently reading "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" by J.D. Vance—which Moriarty comments is "definitely worth a read."

ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION: "I think we have made progress, but there is a lot more work to do here and we all have a role to play," she says. "In both the U.K. and the U.S., women have made up roughly half of the students entering law schools for a number of years, but they are consistently failing to come through to partnership levels in law firms at the rate that entry levels would indicate. There is still a lot to do in progressing women into senior roles. We need to encourage women to take more risks, back themselves, and say 'yes,' more often. It is also important that business leaders provide women with the support they need to be successful in their career ambitions. When reviewing our relationship law firms, I ensure that we look at their diversity statistics, not just gender, but also ethnic origin, LGBT diversity, and social mobility. I am committed to encouraging girls to enter the legal profession and young female lawyers to strive to achieve their goals, mostly through external talks."