My legal life: Andrew Magowan, The Legal Director

I moved in-house after five years as a City corporate lawyer. I’d enjoyed doing deals but 11 months on secondment to help shut down the company behind the Millennium Dome (what’s now the O2 Arena) showed me there was much more to business life. After getting over the shock of being left in a portable building on a windy patch of the Docklands, I absolutely loved the diversity, urgency and responsibility which came with closing everything up by the government’s self-imposed 12-month deadline (even the attempted diamond heist).

I’ve since had GC-level roles in airport and duty-free retailing, helicopter services in the oil and gas industry, online fashion retail, and fine wine and spirits merchanting. I have been lucky to find bosses willing to look outside their industry for the right skills and fit. While each business was very different, all were equally challenging in their own ways. For me, it’s the level of responsibility you’re trusted with as a GC that matters most, not how well known or how big the company is.

My banner achievement would be successfully defending and then settling a five-year global IP battle that threatened the very name of our business – that was existential. But as my career has gone on I’ve become obsessed with what’s actually effective within a business. I’ve no time for box-ticking, and a healthy suspicion of doing the same thing that’s always been done – everything can be improved and done more effectively. So I’m actually most proud of when I’ve been able to rethink how to secure better results ‘on the ground’, even if the approach looked ‘odd’ or ‘unusual’ on the page.  

After more than seven years in the same role, and with a hugely capable number two ready to step up, I knew it was time to do something different. But after 15+ years as a full-time GC, the idea of doing the same again with a different company didn’t appeal. I also wanted to get more involved in sustainability. There’s no bigger threat to all business models than the negative effects on our planet and people.

'I’ve become obsessed with what’s actually effective. I’ve no time for box-ticking, and a healthy suspicion of doing the same thing that’s always been done – everything can be improved and done more effectively'

So after travelling for 10 weeks round Colombia and Mexico, I came back with the aim of doing a number of different things. I wanted to do something in sustainability, something back home in Northern Ireland, something outdoors, something that involved giving back. I’ve never felt as full of possibilities as I did back then.

Covid-19 then threw a spanner into my plans, eventually forcing me to re-evaluate. That led to an amazing part-time sustainability role, with a bit of ‘legalling’ on the side. And that reminded me of just how much value an experienced in-house lawyer can bring. It wasn’t the ‘legal thing’ I was running away from in 2019, it was the full-time thing. I realised that my ideal was to be able to use my legal experience, while also retaining enough freedom to be able to do other things.

I’m really enjoying my role as a non-executive director of the Department of Health in Northern Ireland. The team there has really impressed me with their drive and commitment in the face of some of the biggest challenges I’ve ever seen, and I feel really fortunate to have the opportunity to help in a small way. The civil service is certainly different from the commercial side, but there’s much that each could learn from the other. The key challenge as a NED, though – or with any role actually – is to work out where and how you can really add value within the time available to you, and to not get caught up in trying to be an executive.

I certainly wasn’t aware of a part-time GC featuring in the legal landscape, even back in 2019. But now I’ve seen what it can achieve I really wish I’d come up with the idea for The Legal Director myself (damn you, Ed Simpson!). SMEs can benefit hugely from senior strategic, pragmatic legal experience upfront, to help them manoeuvre their way round the icebergs early, and to avoid wasting time on legal distractions. Yet until recently, that sort of senior experience was only available to companies big enough to afford a GC full-time. The biggest surprise to me has been what can be achieved for a business across just a handful of days a month. In fact, it makes me wonder quite what I was doing across five days before.