Profile: Richard Wiseman

Two years ago, Richard Wiseman controversially told Managing Partner that most law firms’ marketing efforts are wasted. Caroline Poynton now talks to him about his career development as general counsel at Shell, and asks him a little more on his views of external counsel.

Why did you choose the in-house rather than private-practice career route?
I chose to go in-house an awful long time ago. I think the great disincentive to private practice was having to specialise much more narrowly. I enjoyed the variety of the in-house role.
I made the decision to go in-house straight after qualification and that was 30 years ago. I started with a small firm in Covent Garden, then called Mackrell & Co. I was concentrating on company and commercial work and it just so happened that at that time we were acting for a company selling ships to Shell. I realised soon after that the firm wasn’t the right place for me in the long term, so when a job came up at Shell after I qualified, I turned up and I am still here now.

What have been the most challenging aspects of your career as an in-house lawyer at Shell?
The real challenge has been the variety, which is exactly what brought me here in the first place. I could name any number of jobs that seemed challenging at the time, the most recent of which was my participation in the unification of Royal Dutch and Shell Transport under a single listed company. That was an enormous job.
Another challenge was trying to dispose
of the Brent Spar by abandoning it in the North Atlantic, much to the consternation of Greenpeace. The legal/commercial and political pressures over that were really outside the experience of anybody in the team. It was a very emotive issue, but also a really exciting time to be part of that particular team. Like the rest of Shell, we looked at it in the fairly dispassionate technical way, which was probably one of the problems we had, because we weren’t perhaps taking enough account of the emotional context.

What achievement are you most proud of in your time with Shell?
I like to think I’ve had some success with very large projects. There have been many occasions when the sheer magnitude of the task has been daunting. I have to say, however, that I’ve never been worried by the legal/technical challenges because I’ve either been able to get to grips with those, or I’ve been able to find somebody else who could guide me.
The recent unification of the group was also undoubtedly the most significant thing I’ve been involved in. And I have to be the first to admit that any single lawyer or even law firm could not have done the job on their own. So I don’t regard myself as anything more than the conductor of the legal orchestra. Getting the various instrumentalists to play the same tune and begin at the beginning and end at the end. That was something that I like to think I contributed towards.

What kind of approach do you have to adopt to succeed with such large projects?
Most important is being able to look at such projects in the round, so that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, and so that all the parts of the legal equation come together, without anything falling between the gaps.

You have recently changed roles within Shell. Can you tell me a little more about your new role and why you decided to make the change?
The main thing is that I am now in a much more specialist/technical role than when I was UK general counsel. I am responsible for a small legal team, looking after M&A, project finance and anti-trust, so it’s a much smaller team with a narrower technical focus.
As for making the change, it’s just a different role. There are some aspects of this that I haven’t done before, even in a career as long as mine, so getting up the learning curve is one of the most enjoyable parts of it. For instance, I’ve done quite a lot of M&Ain the past, but certainly no project finance.

How much of your time do you spend working with external counsel?
I spend quite a lot of time working with external counsel – selection and retention of outside counsel in particular plays quite a big part of my current job.

The last time we spoke, you mentioned that your choice of external law firms is based on one or two individuals with whom you can develop a relationship, rather than the firm as a whole. Is that still your view and how do you go about selecting the right external counsel for the job?
Most of the projects I’ve dealt with are not things that can be dealt with by individual lawyers, so the strength of the law-firm team is an important consideration, but overall, I believe that the staring point for selection is the relationship I have with one or two key players in a law firm.
In addition, assuming technical ability is a given, selection becomes a question of chemistry – it’s about finding people you can do business with. There are very rarely jobs that we are doing that couldn’t be adequately done by half a dozen law firms. To select between them, personality is an important factor – but it is also about how people organise themselves to provide an optimum service, in terms of providing you with the right team for the job. Pricing of course is also important, but not the most critical feature. If you get the organisation right, then in my experience, cost follows.

What frustrates you most about working with external counsel?
Lack of candour. People who are not open with you about the difficulties you are going to face, or who spring a surprise on you in terms of the people that they think they’re going to choose to work with you when they haven’t discussed that with you, and so on. The important thing for me is that there are no surprises.

What strategies have you employed at Shell to improve your day-to-day working relationship with external lawyers?
My theory is that many problems are to some, or even a great extent, the fault of the client. The client cannot expect the lawyer to be a mind reader. Your requirement should be clearly spelt out, and if you haven’t done that, then you may get things that you weren’t expecting.
Contact is important and telling people when things are going right and when they’re getting it wrong.

If there was one thing in your career that you could change, what would it be?
I think I would have liked a spell outside legal, in the business. I think that would have more quickly given me the sorts of insights that as a lawyer you build up much more slowly in relation to your clients.

How do you think the in-house counsel role will develop in the future?
I think that big companies in particular are going to be much more self reliant. There will always be areas in Shell where we will seek help from external counsel and our needs will vary from place to place. For example, in the UK, I hope we will always go outside for litigation, because frankly we are unlikely to ever have sufficient expertise in-house.

What are your career plans for the coming months/years?
I have just started a new job, so I’m not planning to make any immediate moves. I am also due to retire in six years’ time, so I suppose I will have other things to think about in due course.

Biography
Richard Wiseman was born in 1951 in London, England. He qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1974, and as a solicitor and barrister in Victoria, Australia in 1985.
He joined the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies in 1975 and has held a number of posts in group companies in England and Australia. He has advised on a succession of high profile matters, including developing the legal practices of the early days of the UK offshore oil and gas business, the Australian North West Shelf LNG project, the controversial decision on the disposal at sea of the Brent Spar Oil Storage facility and the acquisition by Shell of Enterprise Oil plc.
From 1992 to 2005 he was general counsel for Shell UK, responsible for the team advising on the Group’s UK operations.
This year he was appointed Shell’s general counsel for M&A. He was closely involved in the unification of the former Dutch and British parent companies (Royal Dutch and Shell Transport) under the new single parent, Royal Dutch Shell plc.
His interests include the visual arts, the history of technology and horology.
He can be contacted at richard.wiseman@shell.com