Paths to the Board: Legal Advisor

[00:00:01] Intro: Welcome to Minutes by Boardcycle, where in each episode we pack the insights from one of Australia's boardroom leaders into just a few minutes.

[00:00:10] Today, host Richard Conway interviews Ilana Atlas, Chair of Scentre Group, formerly Managing Partner at Mallesons, and Group Secretary and General Counsel at Westpac on her path from a successful legal career to boardroom leadership.

[00:00:25] Richard: Welcome to the minutes podcast. I'm your host, Richard Conway. And today, my guest on the podcast is Ilana Atlas. Ilana is the chair of Scentre Group and a director of Origin Energy. Before her non-executive career, Ilana had an extensive legal career. She was a partner at leading Australian law firm Malleson Stephen Jacques, which is now known as King Wood Mallesons, including that she was managing partner there.

[00:00:51] Richard: And she also spent part of her legal career in the corporate world as Westpac's group secretary and general counsel. Today we'll be talking about the path [00:01:00] from being a legal advisor to becoming a boardroom leader. Ilana, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:05] Ilana: Thanks, Richard. Lovely to be here.

[00:01:07] Richard: So, Ilana, you've taken quite an interesting path from being a partner at Mallesons to where you are now as a non-executive director and chair. Would you be able to give us the highlight tour of how you went from the legal career into to where you are now?

[00:01:24] Ilana: Right. I'll definitely stick to the highlights if I can. So yes, I was a partner at, at Malleson's for about 17 years. But in that career, as many partners in law firms find, there was, lots of variety, had lots of opportunity. I ran our New York office for a period. I was also partner in charge of what they call people and information, which was essentially HR role in the firm.

[00:01:49] Ilana: I had a significant part in recruiting graduates into the firm. So I did, lots of different things and had wonderful opportunities, including being managing [00:02:00] partner. And then the opportunity arose to become general counsel at Westpac, which I jumped at and it came at sort of the right time because I've been, you know, in the firm for a long period.

[00:02:12] Ilana: I think we just completed the demutualization of NRMA, which was a huge transaction and taken its toll. And I think I probably felt that I'd had enough of all-nighters and it was time to take back a little bit of control of my life. If that was possible. So anyway, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to become general counsel at Westpac, which was a wonderful role.

[00:02:35] Ilana: I didn't get much control of my life back, but I certainly gave the me the opportunity to work in an extraordinary corporate, which Westpac is and was at that time. So it was a privilege to work with the senior management team. So David Morgan was the CEO at that point the board. It was an extraordinary board.

[00:02:55] Ilana: So that was a fabulous opportunity. While I was doing that, my passion had [00:03:00] always been people in organisations. And again at Westpac, you know, I was given a chance obviously, I'd lead a quite a large legal team. So that was a good opportunity to sort of become a leader of a team in a corporate.

[00:03:14] Ilana: And David Morgan and Phil Cronican at that time asked me if I was interested in taking on the HR role. For which I freely admit I was completely unqualified. But anyway, they thought I could do it. And so I thought, well, if they thought I could do it, I'll give it a bash. So I did, and was very grateful.

[00:03:33] Ilana: So the Christmas break before I started in the role, I read the Australian Human Resources Guide. And turned up to take on the job. It probably sounds a lot worse than it is, but it was a fabulous opportunity. I was so grateful for it and had the role for eight years and must say, it was the highlight of my executive career.

[00:03:55] Ilana: I suppose I'd been around boards a lot, obviously as a lawyer advising [00:04:00] them, but also at Westpac as general counsel, I was called company secretary as well. And had been on a number of boards. For a number of years, I think by the time I'd left Westpac, I was on the council of ANU, I was chairing Bell Shakespeare. So I'd been around boards a lot.

[00:04:15] Ilana: So it felt like a natural progression to take on a non-executive director career, and I was very fortunate after that to have some excellent opportunities to do that. So that's how it happened.

[00:04:28] Richard: Great. And so I wanted to focus on the choices that you made to move out of the legal sort of technical legal career and into HR, for example, as you talked about in the case of Westpac, but also at Mallesons into management roles, et cetera. And ask you how important you feel getting that training and that experience was to both obtaining roles as a non-executive director, but also [00:05:00] to what you bring to the board table as a non-executive director?

[00:05:04] Ilana: Oh, I think it was extremely important. There's no question if you have a number of strings to your bow, I think it's certainly advantage to you in a non-executive director career. So I was fortunate that by the time. I was interested in that path, I sort of, as I often say, squeeze the lemon out of my executive career.

[00:05:27] Ilana: So I did have experience in, but obviously in sort of people issues, but also risk issues. And I'd done M& A transactions. So I knew my way around a deal. I'd also obviously had legal capability as well. So I think that breadth of experience is very helpful for when boards are sort of ticking boxes as to the capability they need in the boardroom.

[00:05:55] Richard: Yep, and so focusing on the legal and company [00:06:00] secretarial background, what do you think are some of the key skills that people who are coming from that background like yourself can bring to the boardroom?

[00:06:08] Ilana: Well, I think that you just understand boardrooms. And for those of us who've been around boardrooms for a long time, I think it's easy to underestimate that it is actually quite a strange environment. And so I think that the understanding of boardrooms, the understanding of what's required to be a good director, obviously governance understanding is just increasingly much more important in a regulatory environment.

[00:06:36] Ilana: Certainly there are a number of industries now that are so highly regulated. That I think having that skill, is extremely important to boards in those regulated sectors. In addition to that, lawyers are highly analytic, very good at assimilating significant amounts of information, and being able to come to [00:07:00] views or judgments based on that information.

[00:07:02] Ilana: So I think they're excellent skills that lawyers bring to the boardroom.

[00:07:08] Richard: Yeah. Then on the flip side, do you think there are any kind of inherent characteristics or learned behaviours that lawyers and company secretaries need to put to one side or need to overcome if they really want to shine as directors?

[00:07:22] Ilana: Probably risk aversion and decision making. So, we are all incredibly good at seeing the risks in anything. So, and that's sort of what our training is. And what we're paid to do. So I think there is, you know, lawyers, I think, and this is obviously a huge generalisation, but there is an element of risk aversion.

[00:07:48] Ilana: And the second is we are very good at seeing all sides. And so when it comes to the crunch, And making the decision, that sometimes is a [00:08:00] touch challenging.

[00:08:01] Richard: Absolutely. And then, so, if you met a lawyer or company secretary who wanted to launch their boardroom career, what would your top pieces of advice be to them in terms of what they can do to get themselves on that path?

[00:08:15] Ilana: Well, I do think it's important to try and get as broad a range of experience as possible. And so it is about, what opportunities are there available to you? What other things can you do to broaden your experience? The second is to be very clear about what your skills are, and try and match them to what an organisation might need.

[00:08:40] Ilana: So there are organisations, as I said, who need, you know, high levels of regulatory legal skills. And I think that it's just an important, it's just important to match what you've got to organisations that require those skills.