Rosemary Martin, Vodafone, at the Global Independent Law Firms Forum, 2019

Slaughter and May are "beautiful craftsmen" who appear on Vodafone's legal panel "without debate", its group general counsel has revealed in a frank interview about what she looks for in her advisers.

Speaking at Legal Week's Global Independent Law Firms Forum in London last week, Rosemary Martin spoke very highly of the magic circle firm, which she also instructed when she led the legal team at Reuters almost a decade ago.

Talking about veteran Slaughters partner Nigel Boardman, Martin said: "It's about the way they think, and their intellectual capacity to think. When you're really up against it, you need someone who can think differently if necessary.

"I always said I'd rather have Slaughter and May with me, and I certainly don't want them against me."

She describes herself as "old fashioned", and appreciates how well Slaughters draft their legal documents: "Slaughters are beautiful craftsmen. If you want it perfectly drafted and executed, they're excellent."

She added: "Linklaters had been an adviser to Vodafone for many years. So that was two [panel] slots filled without debate."

"I always said I'd rather have Slaughter and May with me, and I certainly don't want them against me"

The telecoms giant reviewed its panel in early 2018, with Slaughter and May, Linklaters, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose Fulbright and Osborne Clarke all keeping their places, and DLA Piper and Eversheds Sutherland being dropped. Squire Patton Boggs and Wiggin took their place.

Outside of the first two names on the list for Martin, the panel took some tweaking. Martin said she initially had "one firm too many" among the middle-tier firms.

According to Martin, one former legal adviser to the company had claimed to be able to do more international work than it was actually capable of. Martin said in the end, "they were not winning the mandate for cases and matters they wanted, and they felt they were investing too much in us and not getting enough in return".

Rosemary Martin

In general, Martin appreciates firms that "invest more than just chargeable time with us", which she hoped a slimmed-down panel would help with.

Another panel firm to have impressed Martin is Osborne Clarke, which introduced Martin to a piece of legal technology produced by software company HighQ.

"Osborne Clarke came to us with a really nice platform for real estate work that quickly turned into something our facilities managers, then our surveyors, then our real estate agents were using"

"We really want our law firms to help us think how we do our work internally. Osborne Clarke came to us with a really nice platform for real estate work that quickly turned into something our facilities managers, then our surveyors, then our real estate agents were using."

She said the HighQ platform was a "fabulous tech solution that really helped us as a business". HighQ most recently took a spot in Allen & Overy's legal tech programme, Fuse.

Martin outlined a few initiatives that she particularly appreciates from her advisers, saying there's "real value" in providing flexible billing. She said she picks out one of her panel firms for being "excellent" at "pricing generously" on high-profile matters and then downplaying fees on "something less strategic".

Martin said she's also "extra grateful" to law firms that provide training and offer services such as covering in-house maternity leave and various absences, which she described as "one of the best ways to build a relationship with a client".

She said she is open to alternative legal service providers, and is "really pleased" to see some law firms adopt managed legal services in recent years. Vodafone has historically used Axiom, with Martin saying that its lawyers have been "really valuable to us".

Vodafone had used UK managed legal services provider Riverview in the past, but had to drop the company after it was bought by EY due to a conflict, as it acts as Vodafone's auditor.

Martin is keen to keep the legal work in-house whenever possible so that her team can build up their own knowledge reserves.

"For something like data privacy or GDPR, we'll want to build that experience in-house"

This is particularly true for new, developing legal areas where knowledge can be at more of a premium – for example, around new technologies such as blockchain or the internet of things. She also cited the danger of using an external law firm that can take what they've learned and help clients that are possible competitors of Vodafone.

She said: "For something like data privacy or GDPR, we'll want to build that experience in-house. Clearly it's a massive topic for Vodafone and we want to build our understanding of the law ourselves."

Since arriving from Reuters just under a decade ago, Martin has transformed the way Vodafone manages its legal operations by taking a chainsaw to its legal panel, cutting its size from more than 70 firms to now just seven, streamlining its internal operations, and pushing the use of tech across the team.

In recent months, the Vodafone legal team has agreed to work with legal tech companies through Slaughter and May's Collaborate initiative, and has also taken a seat on the government-backed LawTech Delivery Panel.

Martin said her efforts have shown results on the company's bottom line: "Our CEO looked at our figures and said: 'Four hundred and fifty of you contribute financially about the same as one of our mid-size subsidiaries – which are made up of about 2,000 people.'

"For me that's the real measure of success – do the board and executive committee value what we do and feel the value of it?"