In this edition, we head across the Tasman to chat with Millie McCulloch, General Counsel at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne. Having built her career across Aotearoa and Australia, Millie has returned to the medical research sector she worked in early in her career. She shares what it’s like to lead legal in a complex research environment, how her team is navigating AI, and why she describes the role as her “dream job”.
Tell us about your role at MCRI. What brought you to it?
MCRI is one of the top children’s medical research institutes in the world. We have about 1,800 paid staff, as well as a large number of honorary appointees who might work for a university or hospital and also conduct research with us. I’m General Counsel and, including me, we have a team of five lawyers, as well as an insurance adviser and a compliance adviser. We support researchers working on collaborations with other institutes, hospitals and universities around Australia and the world. We deal with intellectual property, commercialisation of technology, material transfers and privacy, and we have a significant clinical trials programme. Because those clinical trials involve children, there are also important considerations around insurance, ethics, consent and privacy.
"I would describe it as my dream job." | ||||
I studied science and law at university and, after practising for a year in Christchurch, moved to Melbourne. I found my way into the medical research sector in private practice, and MCRI was actually one of my clients very early in my career. I worked in Melbourne for almost 15 years before we moved back to New Zealand when our eldest started school. We ended up staying for seven years, and during that time I studied an MBA and worked at Xero, among other things. But I’d always had my eye on coming back to this sector because I loved it so much. When it felt like the right time for us to return to Melbourne and this role came up, I thought, “I’ve got to give it a crack.”
I would describe it as my dream job. It’s the type of legal work, the subject matter, the Institute and the team. It all just came together.
What does leading the legal function look like day to day?
My day-to-day involves a lot of very interesting, sometimes unusual questions that come from left field, as well as supporting my team with some quite complex transactions. It might be that we’re doing a clinical trial in Ireland and need to think about European approvals, insurance, patient consent and where the data goes. We might have a data breach, an IP question or an agreement someone needs advice on; there is a real variety of work.
Like many other teams in this sector, we are very busy. The Institute is growing, and more grant money means more research, which means more collaborations and legal work. There are some ambitious projects that our team helps resource as well, which take up a significant portion of our time. We’ve been focusing on how we triage and prioritise work. We’re constantly having the conversation: “Is it actually urgent, or do you just want it off your plate?” If it’s truly urgent, we expect people to come and see us or pick up the phone. It’s not a perfect science and prioritisation is always tricky, but it helps us focus our time where it’s really needed.
How is AI changing the work of the legal team?
AI is a big area for us. The Institute more broadly is using it in some very complex and cutting-edge ways, to analyse and collate data, build tools and develop treatments. Our use and understanding of AI within Legal is quite different to that of some of our researchers, but it means we’re working alongside some sophisticated and exciting uses of the technology. I’m also part of some key AI governance and risk committees which bring together representatives from across the Institute.
"AI can save time, but sometimes it shifts the work rather than taking it away." | ||||
Within Legal, we’re using AI more and more, and trying to be smart about it. We have AI tools that we can use in our own secure environment, and we’re testing some integrated AI functionality within our matter management system. We’re also using it for things like summarising long contracts and legislation and helping us identify the areas that need closer attention and collating information for training and education resources.
Whenever I raise the idea of growing the team, the response is often, “Get AI to do it.” But AI isn’t a lawyer, and certainly doesn’t have the personal human touch that many legal matters require.
AI can also create work in ways we perhaps didn’t expect. We have some really great people within the Institute who think they’re being super helpful and will come to us and say, “I’ve drafted this.” And then you realise that Claude or Copilot or ChatGPT has drafted it. They’re thinking, “Great, I’ve saved Legal all this time,” but we still need to go through it and work out whether it actually does what we need it to do. So yes, AI can save time, but sometimes it shifts the work rather than taking it away.
There’s also an additional layer of complexity because of the nature of the work we do. We’re dealing with patient data, confidential information, research data, Institute IP and potentially IP that doesn’t even belong to us. We need to ask: do we understand what the tool is doing, and do we understand where the data is going? The area is moving so fast, and you just can’t possibly be across everything. I’d say that’s probably one of the trickiest parts of navigating the fast moving AI landscape.
What are you most excited about looking ahead?
There is some really exciting technology coming out of the Institute, and we get to be part of that journey. There are things like growing patches of heart tissue in the lab that will eventually be able to be transplanted into humans. And that’s just one of many projects we’ve got going on. We get to be part of the journey, helping facilitate that work into its next phase, helping children and adults with complex medical needs.
I also have an exceptional team. They’re doing a brilliant job, and I can see the growth and development in them, which is incredibly rewarding. I’d love to grow the team in the future, we definitely have enough work! For me, it’s about finding people who are commercially astute, but who also like a laugh and don’t take themselves too seriously. You’ve got to be able to get on with it, make decisions and move quickly. It’s busy, but it’s fun.
As long as I can keep helping these projects progress and making a difference for children, it’s really easy to get out of bed in the morning to come to work.
Ngā mihi nui to Millie for sharing a little of life inside the legal team at MCRI with us. From the “really insanely cool” research coming out of the Institute to the everyday realities of a busy legal team, it’s easy to see why Millie calls this her dream job.
This article forms part of our In-house legal spotlight series. You can explore previous editions of Juno Counsel for more stories, perspectives and practical insights from the in-house legal community.