Former RB vice president and group legal affairs GC Claire Debney is set to join Shire as part time director of legal strategy, working through her own consultancy Luminopex, which she has set up as a vehicle to advise in-house legal teams on transformation and technology.
Debney has been brought in to Shire by former RB boss Bill Mordan, who was previously group GC at RB and joined Shire in June 2015 as GC and company secretary. The director of legal strategy role has been newly created.
More widely, Luminopex will provide mentoring and coaching and create and implement learning and development programmes for in-house legal teams. At RB, Debney was responsible for setting up a global leadership programme, The Academy.
Luminopex will also advise in-house teams on technology, including matter management, compliance tools and contract automation. Debney led RB in rolling out ContractExpress across the in-house legal team in the form of award winning transformation programme i-Legal.
Debney told Legal IT Insider: “I describe myself as an optimistic change agent for the legal profession. This newly created role at Shire reflects the leadership of GC Bill Mordan: investing in your people, innovating through process, learning and technology to keep your team inspired and your intellectual capital in-house. It’s a great fit for me to be supporting the Shire legal team as Shire is a pioneer and at the forefront of changing outcomes for those with rare diseases.
“I personally understand the importance of what Shire sets out to do, having lost my father to a rare form of blood cancer, which is one of the diseases that Shire is working to treat.”
Debney was on a panel looking at innovation at Legal Leaders IT in Gleneagles in 2015 and chaired the Legal Leaders GC conference in May.