Müller UK & Ireland Legal Director, Sam Plant

Müller UK & Ireland Legal Director, Sam Plant discusses why he enjoys working within the FMCG sector

We’re pleased to present the latest instalment in our In-house Legal Journeys series, featuring Sam Plant , Legal Director at Müller UK & Ireland .

Our interview with Sam originally appeared in Florit Legal’s In-house Legal Journeys? blog, where senior in-house lawyers provide valuable insights into the roles, challenges, and experiences shared by in-house lawyers across various industries.

Sam brings over two decades of experience to his role, having transitioned from private practice to become a key leader in the FMCG sector. In this in-depth interview, he shares his perspective on the evolving role of in-house counsel and the unique aspects of working within a major food and beverage company, offering thoughtful insights on several topics, including the transition from practice to industry, some of the challenges, leadership and the balance between legal expertise and commercial acumen.

Sam also reflects on his career journey, sharing advice for aspiring in-house lawyers and those looking to advance their careers in corporate legal departments, offering a blend of professional wisdom and practical advice (and knowing Sam, as I do, not without a little humour along the way!).

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There is something for everyone across every topic here, so please enjoy and let me know what you find most interesting, or want to hear more about, and I will do my best in future editions.

If you're a General Counsel or Head of Legal with some career advice to share with in-house lawyers looking to emulate your achievements, or want to give some kudos to those who influenced you in your early days, like Sam has, then please get in touch.

For those not familiar with?Müller (surely not that many!), tell us a little more about your business, which is wider in scope that a lot of people may realise.

In the UK, Müller is best known for our yoghurts and desserts and our Müller Corner, Müller Light, Müller Rice, Bliss and Frijj brands. We also supply much of the nation’s milk, butter and cream, sourcing milk from 1,300 farms across the UK to make a wide range of branded and own brand dairy products.

The Müller Group includes Culina which is a leading food and drinks logistics company, including well-known brands like Eddie Stobart, Great Bear, Fowler Welch and Warrens.

There you go, the marketing department would be proud of me.

What factors made you choose to work there?

I’ve worked primarily in the FMCG sector, largely because I enjoy being part of a business which actually makes stuff. It’s also fun to work on well-known brands which are all around you on the high street. The breadth of Müller’s business also really appealed to me – maybe I am a sucker for punishment, but it’s an interesting challenge working on food brands one moment and logistics contracts the next.

Why is it a good place to work, from your perspective?

Not the most original answer, I know, but it’s the people. I only joined last year but my team are lovely (I have to say that in case they read this) and I have really enjoyed getting to know people across the wider business. There’s also a family feel about the Group – it is literally a family business, still being wholly owned by the founding Müller family, and that translates into a friendly and supportive culture.

What challenges and/or opportunities for growth have come your way in your time there so far?

Over time, I think you develop your own particular approach to leadership but every new leadership role presents different challenges and I have always enjoyed finding the best ways to motivate and get the best out of my teams. There are always new learnings there, particularly across a team of 14 people with different skills, experiences and personalities.

And I’ve learned a lot about milking cows!

What?particular projects have you enjoyed working on most and why?

18 months in, it’s still pretty early days for me (although I did get told off by one of my team the other day for saying that I was still new). But I’ve already led a couple of chunky transactions which have been fun: the sale of our Milk & More home delivery business and the acquisition of the Yew Tree dairy business. Working for a German head-quartered business has been interesting too, with plenty of opportunities to work with colleagues overseas.

What are some of the key issues you are facing??

I don’t think this is sector or function specific but the biggest challenge facing someone leading a team is how to do more with less. Most businesses have been through multiple cost cutting and efficiency programmes over the past 15-20 years and face a world which is increasingly complex and volatile – and a Board which is often increasingly demanding – with reduced budgets and resource. Figuring out how to thrive in that environment is the most important challenge facing anyone leading an in-house team.

How has the role of the in-house lawyer has changed over the years, do you think?

I have seen a transition over time from cost centre to profit driver. We may not sell yoghurt or drive trucks but I see my team’s principal role as delivering sustainable profitable growth, not simply giving legal advice. And I think the business benefits where we are involved in a broader range of decisions, contributing from a different perspective to other people in the board room.

I’ve seen this view – of the in-house lawyer as business partner – questioned a little recently, in the wake of scandals like the Post Office where there has been a fundamental failure of governance. And you do have a different, critical and sometimes challenging responsibility to make sure that the business operates in a compliant and morally defensible way. But I have never seen that as mutually exclusive with being a key part of the leadership team, I just bring a different focus and challenge to the shared aim of enhancing the company’s brand, delivering sustainable profit and making a positive difference to the lives of customers.

What would you say are the main ingredients of a great relationship with external lawyers?

A deep understanding of your business. Your external lawyers need to invest the time to understand your business, your team, your priorities and preferred ways of working and you, as an in-house team, need to make a reciprocal investment, properly immersing them in the business and having regular touch points to keep them up to date and connected.

And trust. We’ve all had advice so riddled with caveats that it’s worthless, because the external lawyers were nervous about the implications of getting it wrong. I want them to take a position, trusting that we are in the relationship for the long term and that we are not going to immediately throw the book at them if (inevitably) things don’t always go to plan.

Oh, and they have to be cheap. Only kidding (not kidding).

When you recruit colleagues, what are the primary things you look for??

The key for me is a practical and pragmatic approach. Businesses don’t really want legal advice, they just want to get on and do stuff and our job is to be able to assess a whole mess of complicated data and rules and translate that into a simple, clear plan of action which will work in the real world.

On a personal level, I look for an interesting and engaging personality. I’m much more aware of implicit bias these days (including the risk that you simply recruit those who look or talk like you) but the business has to want to engage and spend time with this person.

Aside from the formal educational bit, how did you come to be a lawyer??

I had a crush on one of the actresses in LA Law. And the guys all wore great suits. As simple as that. If the clothes had been better on ER, I might have become a doctor.

What’s the most challenging, unusual or thought-provoking interview question you’ve ever been asked?

I’m struggling to think of many really interesting ones. My most memorable interview was probably my first. At my interview to get into Oxford, the professor sat in silence for 20 minutes and didn’t respond at all to my increasingly feeble attempts to engage with him. I still don’t know what I was supposed to do or what the point was. I didn’t get in.

Who’s been the most influential to you in your career??

I’m not sure I ever told him but probably my first General Counsel boss, Greg McMahon. I was in my first in-house role at Airtours. Greg was always unfailingly positive and supportive and fiercely loyal to his team. More than anything, he saw his role as developing his direct reports so that, in time, we could do his job and he had the confidence to give us regular exposure to senior leaders across the business. I learned a lot from him.

Other than that, it would probably be my very first boss in private practice. I won’t name him but I learned a lot from him too and I have spent my career doing the exact opposite of everything which I saw him do…

What nuggets of practical advice can you offer to someone looking to move in-house for the very first time?

I made that move, a long time ago now, as a litigator in private practice (albeit a very bad one). Back then it was quite challenging to land a role if you did not have a general commercial background but my sense is that companies are more open now to employing lawyers with different backgrounds.

Two decades on, I can still remember the shock of the transition from a big firm with numerous professional support lawyers to being one of a handful of lawyers who were expected to be able to deal with anything vaguely legal armed only with several dangerously out of date contract and tort text books. I bumbled through the early days by not being afraid to ask even the most basic question (and to keep doing that until I felt I had uncovered the core of any particular issue) and developing the confidence to admit that I didn’t immediately know the answer. It obviously helps to know someone who does, either a more experienced colleague or a trusted advisor, and developing that support network is key.

In truth, more than twenty years on, my approach hasn’t changed much.

I like to ask people about their mistakes (because I have made a few, and it makes me feel better!). We tend to learn lots from them. What have you learned that way?

I’d certainly agree with this. And mistakes are a good thing in so far as they are proof that you are not playing it too safe or avoiding actually making a judgment call. We only get everything right if we are so conservative and risk-averse that we risk strangling opportunities at birth. It’s a legitimate criticism of our profession.

On that basis, I can safely admit that my career has been festooned with mistakes but the only ones I regret are those where I ignored my instincts or experience and went with the herd. One particularly sticks in my mind. I didn’t sufficiently challenge a proposed acquisition despite my real misgivings because I felt that my commercial peers were better placed to assess it. We spent years trying to fix it afterwards.

So, what makes a great in-house lawyer, and a great first 100-days in a new in-house role?

The best in-house lawyers have a really deep sense of business priorities and processes. They have open and trusting relationships with their key stakeholders and are seen as integral to getting stuff done. They also have the integrity, courage and credibility to challenge the business when required.

As for the first 100 days, that is a crucial period. I would absolutely use it to get to know the business, visit its operations and meet key people. It’s always good to get some runs on the board early but try not to worry about making an instant impact. When you join, there is a short glorious period, never to be repeated, when your to do list is relatively short and if you don’t use it to immerse yourself in the business, what makes it tick and what (and who) really matters, you will regret it.

What’s your response, as a lawyer, to the rise of AI??

I think that AI is the biggest game changer in my working life (and I’m so old that we didn’t have the internet or email when I started). [Me too, Sam!]

It’s early days in our AI adventures but we see it as a way of maximising our effectiveness: getting AI to do some of the legal grunt work, particularly in the area of contract reviews, and allowing us to focus on where we can really add value. In a business as diverse as Müller, it also offers us some opportunities to achieve greater consistency, where this makes sense. We will need to figure out how much reliance we can place on our robotic team mate, though. AI has a disconcerting habit of making stuff up in an attempt to be helpful.

I believe it’s critical for everyone in my team to be confident working with AI. I don’t see AI replacing lawyers but it will replace lawyers who are frightened of it.

How do you support your own well-being and that of your team?

Great question. Müller puts a lot of emphasis on wellbeing, physical and mental, which is one of the things I have really liked about the business.

As a team, we face the usual challenge of too much work and too little time and lawyers are typically highly conscientious with a perfectionist streak. Put all of those elements together and there is a real risk of burn-out or stress. So we focus a lot on how to manage and limit our workload to those areas where we are really making a difference and keep an eye on working hours and holidays. My team are also all naturally very quick to support each other when we have spikes of work (I told you they were all very lovely).

Personally, I have the lucky knack of generally being able to switch off from work when I need to. But there are inevitably periods when that’s not possible and the pressure can build. So I try to practice what I preach and accept that “good enough” is just fine most of the time. I also play tennis and smacking little yellow balls around is a great way to de-stress.

What’s the approach to hybrid working there, and how do you personally like to work?

It works for me and contributes, I think, to my own well-being. I love being in the office with my team or colleagues across the business but working remotely dramatically reduces the dead time I spend travelling which I can either reinvest in the job or in more time with my family. Like so much of life, I think it’s about finding the right balance. I wouldn’t want to work wholly remotely but equally wouldn’t want to go back to the old days of having to work from the office irrespective of what I’m doing that day.

What, if any, interesting or unusual jobs did you do before you became a lawyer? ?

Just holiday jobs – I worked as a telephone sanitiser, in the post room at a diamond tools factory and I was the worst Christmas postman in the history of the Post Office.

Who would you most like to “get stuck in a lift with”?

John McEnroe. We would obviously become best friends and he could work on my backhand volley.

What’s the most interesting/enjoyable book you’ve read in the last year?

I read a lot. My favourite over the past 12 months is probably Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, the story of the Sackler family and the opioid crisis in the US. Sounds miserable doesn’t it but it’s a fascinating story of greed and oddball families.

Do you have a hidden talent??

I draw and paint.

(My legal career almost ended at a very early stage because of my artistic skills. One of my colleagues saw some of my meeting room doodles and asked me to draw cartoons of the various partners in the department. Being young and stupid, I drew them with all their wrinkles, big noses, bald spots and saggy bits and was threatened with disciplinary action.)

Favourite film

Double bill of The Godfather followed by Finding Nemo. All life is here.

Favourite gadget.

Yikes. Bottle opener? I very much live down to the stereotype of middle-aged lawyer and technology.

Favourite holiday destination so far, and where next?

I want to die sipping an Aperol in the Campo Dei Mori in Cannaregio, Venice. Just about my favourite place on Earth, I think.

Next holiday destination: the Charente, Western France. Can’t wait.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

As I said, I play tennis. I am ultra-competitive, a terrible loser and a prolific and imaginative swearer. It’s the only area of my life where I behave like this and I haven’t worked out which version of me is the real one.

What 3 things would you put at the top of your “bucket-list”?

In no particular order: writing a book, walking the Great Wall of China, seeing a Kingfisher.

Most embarrassing moment?

A few years ago, my mobile went off as Tiger Woods was about to tee off at the Open. One of my kids had changed the ring tone without me knowing and for 30 seconds I slow hand clapped and tutted along with the rest of the grandstand until we all realised the sound was coming from my backpack. An elderly lady next to me was applauded for calling me a pillock.

Besides being a lawyer, if money were no object and you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you most like to try or do?

I would study monkey behaviour. A life spent in Boardrooms would be good preparation.

What would you say is your guilty pleasure?

I have more pairs of trainers than it is acceptable for any middle aged man to own.