Can you share your journey to becoming General Counsel at Upper Hutt City Council and your motivation along the way?
I used to be a commercial lawyer in private practice, but I wanted to spend a bit more time being a dad, having realised that partnership was probably not in my future. This role came along in a very Wellington way, via my old boss from a previous in-house role. I’d never worked in local government before, and you don’t get many chances at this stage of a career to jump into a totally new practice area, so I signed on.
How would you describe the scope of your team's role, and what are some of the most rewarding aspects?
We cover a huge spectrum of legal advice. Sometimes you feel like Neo from The Matrix. Councils are subject to something like 70 pieces of legislation. It’s mad. Our team does some transactional stuff to do with property, and official information, but mostly our role is a pure advisory one, helping inform decision-makers. I really enjoy that aspect of lawyering, so find the job very rewarding in that way. There is also an entertaining level of randomness in the fact scenarios. Want to learn how to arrest a dog? Keen to find out who (if anyone) can trespass a freedom camper from a riverbed? Want to know what happens when someone gets into a stream with a digger to try to reclaim some land so he can extend his house? Come and work in local government.
What are the challenges your team is facing that keep you awake at night, and how are you planning on tackling them?
In my early days, it felt like I had an ocean to boil. That kept me awake some nights. There was also an awful lot of “this is how we’ve always done it” being said, and I didn’t know any better, so I had to trust my instincts a lot. Now I’m more in a “perfection is the enemy of good” kind of headspace. I’m also really lucky that my team is sensational. They’re way cleverer than I am, and we have a very open approach to problem solving which I very much enjoy and which allows me to appear smarter than I actually am to the rest of the business. Hopefully, not too many of my colleagues read this, or the jig is going to be well and truly up.
Councils have some big (legal) issues. Water reform, city planning, and so on. One of my biggest concerns is that in focusing on those big issues of the day we might lose sight of doing a good job for the ratepayer. I like to periodically refresh myself on the LGA’s “purpose of local government”, which, in simple terms, is about community wellbeing. My team is often the advocate for the little guy who has pointed out an issue with something the Council is doing. If you’re not in local government for the community, you’re really in the wrong place, I reckon.
In what ways does your team's work contribute to the local community, and are there any initiatives or projects your team is particularly proud of?
I like to think that we help decision makers make the best decisions they can for the community. We haven’t done any big bang things ourselves, but I hope we’ve improved the quality of advice and support that senior executives and elected members are getting. One of the most important things I think we do is point out issues to be solved, while at the same time extending a helping hand. Nobody wants their legal team to be the Department of You Screwed Up, so we try hard to avoid that approach. Overall, while the ratepayer might not notice it, I think we’re helping
Are there any innovations or technologies you have introduced or are planning to introduce soon?
I’m a massive fan of incrementalism and continuous improvement in place of being overzealous, so we’ve done some things but not big things.
We implemented Xakia for tracking our work, so that we could show the business what we did for them. Xakia are easy to work with and inexpensive, and the solution works well for us.
We’ve also polished up our compliance reporting system (nothing fancy, just digital surveys using Microsoft tools) and official information request processing system (also nothing fancy, just tracking and record keeping using SharePoint registers).
We’ve been having ongoing discussions with LawHawk about document automation, and they’ve automated some statutory forms and simple contracts (am I the only one who loves the GMC?) for us.
In the future we’d like to automate our official information processes and templates, but that’s quite a big job.