ICL Ireland sets up first in-house legal function

The Belfast office of PricewaterhouseCoopers has lost its director of corporate legal services to ICL.

Raymond McGinley has joined the IT services company as senior legal adviser for Ireland.

ICL managing director Brian Baird says he has been looking for internal legal advice for some time.

"We've been moving the business towards e-commerce services, which is not a simple internal thing. Now we have a lot more contracts with commercial and legal angles which have brought commercial and legal to the fore as one of the biggest professions within the company," he says.

"We did the legal work ourselves but now partnerships and joint ventures are the name of the game and we need Raymond to make these partnerships work."

McGinley will address the legal direction of the business in Ireland and will be part of a team in western Europe. He will continue to handle company commercial work but with particular emphasis on private finance initiatives (PFIs).

He says that he made the move because he wants to develop his experience of the IT sector and e-commerce in particular. "My previous role was to set up and head the legal services at PwC. I was doing corporate and company commercial work, which involved some IT. By moving to ICL, I am progressing that role.

"At PwC a lot of time was taken up with management - about 60 per cent - and I wanted to get back to doing more legal. My job was to build up and service the needs of clients and I had to spend a lot of time on management but now I'm straight into high level work."

McGinley says he is also pleased that there will be an international dimension to his work.

PwC was unavailable for comment.