In-House Counsel Conference: Legal & Commercial Imperatives
Insulate yourself & your organisation from today’s emerging risks by gaining strategies & information to help you navigate the latest legal & commercial perils facing in-house counsel. Discover how to navigate the continuous disclosure regime, COVID-19’s continuing impact on the workplace, climate change risk, business interruption insurance & governance best practices. Gain your core CPD points while examining the future of in-house legal teams, diversity & inclusion and the latest tax risks. 223N03
Description
Attend and earn 7 CPD units including:
3.5 units in Substantive Law
1 unit in Ethics & Professional Responsibility
1 unit in Practice Management & Business Skills
1.5 units in Professional Skills
This program is applicable to practitioners from all States & Territories
Session 1
The Top Legal & Commercial Issues for In-House Counsel in 2022
Chair: Andrew Gray, Partner, HWL Ebsworth Lawyers
9.00am to 9.55am The Newly Permanent Market Disclosure Regime: What Does it Mean for Companies, Directors and In-House Counsel?
- The history of the continuous disclosure regime in Australia and its purpose
- The approach to mandatory disclosure in Australia’s closest peer jurisdictions
- The changes to the continuous disclosure regime and associated legislative reform (‘CD changes’)
- The intended and likely effect of the CD changes on:
- Regulated entities
- Directors and officers of regulated entities
- Shareholders
- Insurers
- Litigation-funded class actions
- How inhouse counsel of regulated entities might respond to the CD changes
Presented by Daniel Crennan KC, Principal Consultant, Credi Consulting; former Deputy Chair, ASIC; Queen’s Counsel, Victorian Bar
9.55am to 10.30am COVID-19 and the Workplace: Impact of Vaccinations in the Road to Recovery
- How businesses can equip themselves to navigate added obligations and likely claims in relation to safety, employment, discrimination and privacy
- Taking a dynamic approach when responding to the risks of COVID-19 in the workplace to ensure duties are met
- Business implications for failing to conduct a suitable risk assessment:
- Regulatory enforcement actions or prosecutions
- Temporary or long-term loss of critical staff and corporate knowledge
- Disruptions to service delivery due to temporary or long-term loss of staff
- A guide to key risks and obligations for businesses related to COVID-19
- Safety: discharging the primary duty of care under health & safety legislation
- Employment: an employer’s ability to mandate vaccination and potential workers compensation claims and other employee claims
- Discrimination: the balance between public health orders, anti-discrimination legislation, and imposing vaccinations or restricting goods or services to unvaccinated persons
- Privacy: managing health information in accordance with privacy law
Presented by Michael Tooma, Managing Partner Clyde & Co; co-author, Managing COVID-19 Risks in the Workplace A Practical Guide, LexisNexis; Best Lawyers 2022, Occupational Health and Safety Law, Litigation, & Government Practice; Leading Workplace Health & Safety Lawyer, Doyle’s Guide 2021
10.30am to 10.45am Morning Tea
Professional Skills
10.45am to 11.25am Corporate Governance and Leadership
- Corporate governance
- Corporate governance as an essential element of ESG
- The increasing focus by investors, corporate governance advisers, regulators and activists on whether a listed company has good governance
- Aspects of an effective Board and its responsibilities
- Remuneration; oversight of regulatory compliance
- Composition, skill set, independence & quality of the Board
- Role of founders / controlling shareholders
- Well drafted Charters, Codes of Conduct, and articulation of policies
- Case Study: the APRA inquiry into the reasons for failure of governance at CBA
- Leadership of the Corporation
- The respective leadership roles of the CEO and the Board
- The CEO’s role leading Management in development of strategy and conduct of operations as the stakeholders’ public face of the company
- The Board’s role, in conjunction with management, to develop and promote the culture of the company
- The Board’s oversight over adherence by the CEO and all employees, whether regulator required or expected by its stakeholders
- The Chairman of the Board’s task of working with the CEO to provide board oversight of governance, and satisfying stakeholders that the outcomes are effective
- Sharing leadership of the corporation with boundaries to be carefully defined
Presented by Kevin McCann AO FAICD, Chairman Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited; former Chairman Macquarie Group Limited and Origin Energy Limited; Trustee of the Sydney Opera House; former Partner and Chairman, Allens
11.25am to 12.20pm In-House Counsel’s Checklist for Climate Change Risk
- Climate change litigation risks and trends
- The rise in climate change litigation increasingly targeting corporations
- New & emerging types of claims against corporations
- Failure to disclose climate change risks; breach of directors’ duties; misleading & deceptive conduct; greenwashing
- How corporate governance fits in to mitigate climate change litigation risk & the role of in-house counsel
- Insights into how these issues may evolve in Australia & how corporations & their counsel can prepare
Presented by Edwina Kwan, Partner; Recommended Arbitration Lawyer, Doyle’s Guide 2021, and Erin Eckhoff, Senior Associate, King & Wood Mallesons
12.20pm to 1.15pm Business Interruption Insurance Update: The Guide for In-House Counsel in 2022
- Navigating the key elements of business interruption insurance
- Damage triggers and disease exclusions
- Unique and ongoing challenges presented by COVID-19
- Impact on (re)insurance markets and on dispute resolution mechanisms
- Test case updates, where things stand, and what it means for organisations and in-house counsel
- Checklist of the considerations & next steps for in-house counsel going forward
Presented by Ray Giblett, Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright; Best Lawyers 2022, Insurance Law, Litigation, & Alternative Dispute Resolution; Recommended Professional Indemnity Lawyer, Doyle’s Guide 2020, and Andrew Gray, Partner, HWL Ebsworth
Session 2
CPD Compulsory Units for In-House Counsel
Chair: Jane Webster, General Counsel & Company Secretary, Moorebank Intermodal Company
Practice Management & Business Skills
2.00pm to 3.00pm PANEL ANALYSIS: INSIGHTS FROM THE COALFACE: The State and Future of In-House Legal Teams
- Changing size and nature of in-house legal teams and the resources available to them
- Impact of technology: understanding & utilising data & analytics; automation
- Legal vs business expectations & responsibilities: financial KPIs
- Who does what legal work and what is the in-house counsel’s role?
Panellists:
Jason McQuillen, Partner, Head of Legal Operations and Transformation Services, KPMG
Vivienne Webster, Regional Head of Legal & Treaty, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Munich Re
Olga Ganopolsky, General Counsel – Privacy and Data, Macquarie Group Limited; Chairperson, Business Law Privacy Sub-committee, Law Council of Australia
Professional Skills
3.00pm to 4.00pm Tax Update Alert: Why In-House Counsel Must Engage with Tax Governance Early
- ATO shifting focus to corporations, SMEs and private groups with tax gaps
- More audit activity from the ATO against these entities
- ATO focusing on ADR to resolve these matters, requiring increased legal skills to deal with the matters
- Necessary for companies and in-house counsel to carefully plan tax governance structure
- Tax governance structures and documents will be used as a roadmap by the ATO in any audit activity so it’s critical that it’s created and implemented correctly
- In-house counsel must know strengths and weaknesses in tax governance so the company is ready for audits
- Increasingly frequent inquiries from Boards to in-house counsel on how to deal with these issues
- Guide to how in-house counsel can understand the issues, answer the Board’s questions, and have a tax governance plan in place to minimise audit risks
Prepared by Chris Kinsella, Partner, Holding Redlich; Accredited Specialist in Dispute Resolution; Best Lawyers 2022, Tax Law & Alternative Dispute Resolution
4.00pm to 4.15pm Afternoon Tea
Ethics & Professional Responsibility
4.15pm to 5.15pm PANEL DISCUSSION: Diversity & Inclusion: The Benefits and the Realities for Organisations
Gain insights from those working at the forefront of diversity & inclusion in organisations. The panellists will share their knowledge and experience in navigating D&I issues, challenges and initiatives while examining:
- The business case for D&I, the benefits for organisations, and where things stand
- D&I at the organisational level: steps for real progress
- How to move forward with diversity & inclusion conversations at the personal level
- Insights from the panel and Q&A
Panellists:
Darshana Parekh, Legal Counsel, Plexus
Tania Juric, Associate General Counsel, ANZ & South East Asia, HP
George Paramananthan, Executive Director, ParamCo
Katriina Tahka, CEO, A Human Agency & Co-Founder, Cultivate Sponsorship
Presenters
Edwina Kwan
Edwina Kwan is a Partner in our Sydney dispute resolution practice, specialising in cross-border disputes. She represents clients in all forms of dispute resolution including international arbitrations, mediations and commercial litigation and advises on climate change litigation risk and ESG risks including modern slavery and anti-bribery and corruption. Edwina’s clients regularly seek her advice on managing climate change risk including at the board level where many of her clients have sought advice on the impact of recent Australian court decisions on climate change.
Erin Eckhoff
Erin Eckhoff specialises in complex international disputes, including international commercial arbitration and international investment arbitration. Erin is a trusted international law advisor and has a particular interest in environmental disputes, climate change litigation, and human rights. Erin has practiced in civil and commercial litigation and dispute resolution in London, Sydney, Singapore, and Auckland. She has experience in bilateral investment treaty disputes, trade practice disputes, construction and mining disputes, international trade, general commercial and civil litigation, administrative law, and professional indemnity. She completed her LLM with distinction at the London School of Economics, specializing in public and private international law and international arbitration. Her dissertation concerned the jurisdictional hurdles in bringing extraterritorial claims against transnational corporations. Erin is admitted in England and Wales, New Zealand, New South Wales and the Federal and High Courts of Australia.
Andrew Gray
Andrew Gray is a Sydney-based lawyer with over 25 years’ practical experience in insurance, reinsurance and alternative risk transfer markets. Working across Australia, Asia and Globally, Andrew has held senior in-house roles with Aon and HIH Insurance. Andrew’s focus is on assisting Australian-based clients, including in-house colleagues, to generate innovative and practical solutions across the full range of challenges and opportunities that present in risk management, risk transfer and disputes/litigation.
Jason McQuillen
Jason McQuillen leads the LOTS team in Australia helping clients to right-size, modernise and digitise their internal legal functions and to optimise their external resourcing and use of legal technology. He is an industry leader in modern legal delivery, having co-founded an award-winning innovative law firm in 2011 before setting up and co-leading the NewLaw team at a Big Four firm in London. Jason is also a recognised expert in Commercial Contracts (Legal 500) and has practiced at top tier firms in Australia and the UK as well as inhouse and in government. Jason has a wealth of experience across geographies and industries and has assisted household name clients to: Measure the size, shape and performance of their existing team and to benchmark against their peers; Identify, rank and quantify optimisation opportunities, including the expected return on investment on LegalTech; Review and update their external panel arrangements, including the use of Alternative Legal Service Providers; Design their Target Operating Model to align with the business vision and priorities across the six pillars of Structure, Process, Resourcing, People, Technology and Performance; Identify and select LegalTech to meet business need across the whole spectrum of products including Contract Lifecycle Management, Spend Management, Matter Management and bespoke applications; Set up Managed Contracting Services for high volume “business as usual” contracts for both procurement and sales functions, blending legal expertise, with scalable resource, with repeatable process to deliver consistent and timely outputs at a fixed price; Establish and run Integrated Legal Solutions for contract remediation and repapering projects in response to regulatory changes and in preparation for M&A activity. Rationalise and redraft their contract template portfolio for ease of automation and to allows business self-serve on authorised categories.
Katriina Tahka
Katriina Tahka practiced as an employment lawyer for many years (both in-house and in legal practice) before specialising in Inclusion. After years of seeing little progress, Katriina founded and leads two companies delivering different solutions: A Human Agency (expert workplace culture, inclusion + behaviour change advisory firm) and Cultivate Sponsorship (an online leadership development program which builds progression pathways through the strategic partnering of a leader with emerging talent in a sponsor/sponsee relationship). Katriina has a deep commitment to building inclusive workplaces, especially pathways for non-traditional talent into male dominated industries. Katriina has been appointed as Deputy Chair of the Roads Australia Diversity + Inclusion Committee in recognition of her expertise across industry; and is now instrumental in setting the strategic direction and delivering tangible outcomes for both Roads Australia members as well as the industry more broadly. Katriina works across multiple industries, government and NFP organisations with a focus on building organisational and individual capability and capacity. With the skills shortage biting the bottom line across many workplaces and industries, now more than ever employers need to be thinking differently about how they can build human friendly workplaces.
Darshana Parekh
Darshana Parekh is a lawyer and advisor, having 14 years of experience in the legal industry across private practice, government and in-house. She helps organisations navigate legal and commercial hurdles to bring to life strategic deals. Darshana is an experienced negotiator, facilitating relationships across stakeholders. She has managed corporate risk and governance and has also been a board member with a national not-for-profit. Darshana is an advisor to SkyBuys, a startup based out of Sydney and recently joined the Australian Corporate Counsel DEI Committee. Darshana is an advocate of diversity, equity and inclusion and helps people have courageous conversations and drive equitable changes in workplaces.
Kevin McCann AO FAICD
Kevin McCann is Chairman of Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited and China Matters. He is a Trustee of the Sydney Opera House Trust, a Presiding Pro Chancellor of the University of Sydney, a member of the School of Project Management - Advisory Board, a Member of Barker College Council, and Origin Foundation Pty Limited. He is a former Chairman of Macquarie Group Limited and Macquarie Bank Limited, Origin Energy Limited, Healthscope Limited and ING Management Limited, Fellow of the University of Sydney and former Chair of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust and the National Library of Australia Foundation and Vice Chairman, New Colombo Plan Reference Group
Venue
Cliftons - Spring Street
Level 3, 10 Spring Street
Sydney 2000
NSW
Australia
Parking Information
Parking not included in you registration. Here are some options below.
Secure Park 20 Bond Street - click here for rates
Wilson Park 1 O'Connell Street - click here for rates
Wilson Park 31 Bond Street - click here for rates
Directions
Nearby Public Transport:
Train Stations - Wynyard 400m OR Martin Place 500m
Bus Interchange - Clarence Street 450m
Ferry - Circular Quay 1.2km