The offer to work as a general counsel in South-East Asia came up in 2003 when Heeley was on secondment from Allens to Kraft’s then head office in Melbourne.

“My partner and I looked at each other and he said, ‘Yeah, go for it’. I said, ‘Um, I know nothing about the South East’, but I went,” explains Heeley.

After seven years in Singapore, and a promotion in 2010 to the position of vice president and chief counsel Asia Pacific, Heeley says she has only “scratched the surface” of Australia’s Asian neighbour.

Arriving in Singapore in 2006, Heeley was one of just five lawyers covering the entire Asia Pacific for Kraft. She recalls there being “lots of hope for the business”, but little money coming in.

“Kraft considered Asia Pacific important, but it was tiny. It was tiny in so far as our headquarters in the US was concerned and carried very little within almost every market that it played in, and that meant we couldn’t attract talent,” she says.

Then a few things changed.

Momentum gathered in the existing business and Kraft acquired the LU biscuits business, which Heeley says doubled Kraft’s size overnight. Kraft then bought Cadbury, which doubled its size again.

Now the company has 23 factories across the Asia Pacific and boasts a significant market share in cheese, chocolate, biscuits, gum and candy.

“It’s big,” says Heeley.

But she admits that working amid an environment of constant restructures and acquisitions hasn’t been a smooth ride.

“We’ve got to the point where we joke about it … Change is the only constant [and] you’ve got to have this attitude of welcoming change with open arms because it’s all that you can rely on,” she says.

Embedding and inspiring a culture of trust where people can rely on decisions being made in a particular way, Heeley says, has been a challenge.

“As lawyers we’ve tried to position ourselves as leaders on ethics and corporate governance, as well as dealing with compliance and legal risk management.”

Old habits die hard

Lawyers in private practice, Heeley says, are “trained to avoid risk”, but in an in-house role it’s about “managing risk”.

“That doesn’t mean it’s about breaking the law. It’s recognising where a legal decision ends and a business one starts, and helping the business through that decision-making trajectory,” she says.

Having worked in Allens’ M&A group, Heeley says managing the risk was the one thing she struggled with at first.

“You want to get to the bottom of every risk and you’ve got to let go of a lot of smaller stuff and trust that the business will deal with it, because you just don’t have time for it,” she says.

Every time the phone rings it’s a different problem, a different challenge, says Heeley, and paralegals have been critical to the effectiveness of her team.

“We need experienced lawyers acting as our business unit counsel because a lot like a doctor, you’ve got to be a general practitioner, you’ve got to be able to analyse and deal with people of amazing seniority as well as really junior people with all sorts of problems.”

Kraft’s legal team also gets a helping hand from a number of external firms. Heeley says that Kraft uses its global relationship partner, DLA Piper, wherever possible, but because DLA, like many global firms, is not present everywhere in Asia, flexibility is needed.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all thing anymore. We have second-tier firms for the lower risk work and we have the top tier for the really high risk, strategic stuff,” she says.

The acquisitions recently made by Kraft have seen the number of law firms on the company’s panel increase.

“It takes a lot for us to bring a new firm on, but we’ve brought on three or four firms in the last six months.”

Snakes, trains and tax time

Despite nearly stepping on a snake during her morning run near the rivers last week, Heeley says Singapore is a lot of fun to live and work in.

Compared to Switzerland and Melbourne, both places she once lived, Heeley says Singapore “is so easy” and “everything and everyone works”.

“It’s not always efficient, but everyone has a role to play. Generally speaking things like the trains work; yes there’s heavy traffic but it does move … A huge government housing program has basically meant that homelessness and ghettos in Singapore just don’t exist … The tax system is just amazing; it’s so simple and so effective,” she says.

Heeley remembers being “very proud” of her first pay packet at Allens in the late 80s – “all of $240 a fortnight” – but says the cost of living in Singapore is “not all that high”.

“[Now that $240] would probably get me through lunch,” she says. “If you eat locally the food is cheap and I think the best in the world, but if you try and eat Australian or Western [food it] can be expensive and housing is stunningly expensive.”