Practice Plus Group general counsel and company secretary Lee Gage’s in-house career has spanned fashion (Ben Sherman), transport (Addison Lee) and now healthcare. Global Legal Post spoke to Lee about his role at UK healthcare business Practice Plus, the challenges of running legal teams in regulated industries and the qualities that make a successful in-house counsel.
What are your key responsibilities as group GC at Practice Plus?
I’ve got responsibility for the legal function, and we’re about 12 people in total. We span inquest and regulatory law, commercial contracts, property, tenders, information governance and data protection, as well as insurance and claims. I’m also the corporate secretary, which means attending board meetings and committees, and making sure that all of the corporate governance and filing work is up to speed.
How is your legal department structured?
We’ve got a head of regulatory and inquest law, and he also happens to sit as an assistant coroner. Within his team he’s got two full-time lawyers, a part-time lawyer, a paralegal, and we have an inquest support worker who liaises with Coroners’ Courts, making sure witness statements and documents are filed on time. We encourage and support our lawyers with in-house training to do their own advocacy where appropriate. So, pre-action hearings and pre-inquest review work would be done in-house where appropriate. Where we would go external is if we needed specialist advice, or if we’re just very busy and we can’t cover it in-house given we are a relatively lean team. High-risk work is typically done by outside counsel. To give a sense of the workload, we’ve probably got about 400 open inquests at various stages of maturity. And then we’ve got the civil claims that typically follow, which are also of a similar number. As a team, we have to ensure that we are managing the claims properly according to pre-action protocols. We have a head of claims who does that work with paralegal support as well. The remaining commercial, IG, data protection, real property and corporate work is covered by me and a commercial lawyer.
What are your legal team’s key priorities over the coming year?
We’ve got AI deployed in some key areas and we’re now looking at how we deploy that a bit more systematically across the team. We started by using AI last year in triaging regular incident and claims-notification work, including notifying external parties. This is so highly repetitive, low-value work where freeing up an individual’s time gives us more value. We’ve also recently deployed AI with contract reviews and that kind of more commercial work. What we really want now is for the team to find more creative uses of AI: more far-reaching, deeper use of AI in a more productive way, to enable humans to add value further up the value chain.
You’ve worked as a GC in the fashion and transportation industries previously, how do the challenges of the role differ in the healthcare industry?
The healthcare industry is different because it’s highly regulated. It’s the most regulated environment I’ve worked in. Transport was regulated too, but healthcare is rightly and necessarily more so. What that means is you really have to get under the bonnet of the regulatory environment early, to understand how it all fits together. It’s absolutely necessary to understand where the real pressure and pain points are. You have to understand which elements absolutely have to be done by the book and the consequences of not doing so, versus taking a commercial view and assessing risk more pragmatically. Giving creative legal advice within a regulated legal framework is enjoyable because you understand where the barriers are and therefore you understand the constraints in which you operate, and it makes the practice more creative.
The difference with working in fashion, in particular, is that it’s unregulated, so you’re perhaps bringing a bit more rigour in the sense that there isn’t a statutory framework or a regulatory framework in which you operate, so the lawyer needs to help the organisation form general rules about what its red flags are, its overall risk profile and how it wants to be seen. So, the big difference is really just understanding the industry-specific legislation, and therefore the rules and the guidance/best practice as that changes. Healthcare is also a more litigious environment in terms of patients bringing claims or complaints.
What are the biggest legal issues impacting the healthcare industry at the moment?
There is a change in the commissioning process at the moment. We have to really understand that because we are largely a B2G (business-to-government) organisation. So, understanding that commissioning process and how we may or may not respond to bids, direct awards or contracts is very important for us so that we’re giving the correct advice to maximise commercial opportunity for the organisation.
What do you believe are the most important qualities for a successful in-house lawyer?
You have two ears and one mouth: use them in those proportions. Really listen closely to what the business partner wants. What’s the goal? Make sure that you’re never the ‘department of no’ and that you help them achieve their desired business outcomes within the constraints of the regulation and with options. Come with a few possible scenarios and outcomes to properly partner with your commercial, regulatory and clinical colleagues. Being a good in-house lawyer is really understanding how to partner with your business colleagues and get stuff done pragmatically and quickly.
When I worked at Ben Sherman, there was a fantastic lawyer called Tom Campbell at our parent company, Oxford Industries, who would always say, “Do not let perfect be the enemy of good”. You’re there to get stuff done, you’re not there to come out with the most perfect legal response. You absolutely have to do it on a considered basis, but there is a point at which you have to let go when you’re embedded in a business versus in an external legal advisory capacity. That advice has always stuck with me. It’s about ensuring we have answered the questions that are asked and have we done it in a way that is succinct and clear and moves the business forward. You have to remember that as an in-house counsel, to be truly effective.
What hobby or sport did you do growing up that you wish you had continued as an adult?
I’m going to answer that slightly differently. The answer is tennis. I came to it a little bit late when I was probably about 10 or 11 but then I stopped playing when I went to university. Then, in the lockdown, tennis was one of the very few things you could do because you could play outside. So I met up with a friend during the first lockdown – we were both really bad – but we decided to persevere with it, and so for the last five years I’ve played tennis two to three times a week. So I have picked it up again, but I ideally wish I’d carried on playing earlier as it brings me such joy.
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