Overview

The Asia Pacific legal market is fast becoming one of the most dynamic on earth, with state-funded accelerators, a booming software vendor base and growing client demand for alternative legal services transforming the business of law. In this webinar The Legal 500 and leading professional services network World Services Group ask what these changes mean for the region’s general counsel.

Drawing on the insights from our In-House Technology in Asia Pacific report, we gather together some of Asia Pacific’s leading GCs and senior counsel, along with World Services Group member experts,  to address key questions in the adoption and use of legal tech.

Speakers

Tom Maasland, partner, MinterEllisonRuddWatts
Tom heads up the TMT national practice at MinterEllisonRuddWatts New Zealand. He advises on the full gamut of technology law issues – including major technology transformation programs and technology procurement, outsourcing, managed services and ‘as a service’ arrangements, through to the more run-of-the-mill software licensing and support agreements. He previously worked in-house in New Zealand and in the UK for telecommunications companies and as such has extensive legal and commercial knowledge of the technology and telecommunications sectors.

Machiuanna Chu, partner, Deacons
Machiuanna has nearly 20 years’ experience specialising in commercial and regulatory advisory, and cross-border investment transactions. Her practice covers the full spectrum of commercial advisory services, including DeFi and Fintech, eCommerce, data protection, biotech and healthtech, technology business alliance cooperation and investment. She acts for local and multinational corporations, from start-ups and fast-growing businesses, to world’s most successful global conglomerates and statutory bodies, and is consistently selected by Hong Kong statutory bodies to advise on strategic projects for promotion of technology and R&D investments in Hong Kong, and execution of economic promotion project through AI and digital platform.

Carl Watson, general counsel – Asia, Arcadis
Carl is a project finance/PPP lawyer by background and has built from the bottom up an agile legal team covering Asia for an international engineering firm. He is passionate around the evolution of the legal and compliance enabling function. In that, a key is recognising the dual role that inhouse teams must deliver: efficiency in legal operations; and building and retaining that deep connection to all stakeholders as their trusted partner. Technology and digital tools, how we communicate and our place in the workplace of the future (in a post-Covid world) are all key disruptors to be understood and then deployed to deliver the agility those stakeholders expect.

Per Hoffman, vice president and head of legal affairs and sourcing, North East Asia, Ericsson
Per Hoffman is working as regional general counsel with responsibility for all legal matters for the Ericsson Group in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Since 2016 he has been based in Beijing where he manages a team of ten legal counsel spread across China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. He is member of the leadership team for the Market Area North East Asia and also hold board positions with Ericsson’s legal entities within Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Sheldon Renkema, general manager of legal, Wesfarmers
Sheldon’s current role is general manager – legal at Wesfarmers, a top-10 ASX listed diversified conglomerate. He is responsible for advising on major transactions by Wesfarmers and its business units and leading lawyers who support its industrial business. He also has an active interest in operational efficiency and technology, particularly in the corporate legal sector and is a co-chair of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium in Australia.

Greg Chew, general counsel and chief legal officer, Nanyang Technological University
Greg is general counsel and chief legal Officer at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, a research-intensive publicly-funded university with some 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Having grown up in the UK, Malaysia and Australia, Greg has spent nearly two decades working in Singapore, including as senior associate at Ashurts, senior counsel at Motorola, general counsel for Asia and Africa at Firmenich and, since 2018, general counsel at NTU. In 2020 he was named SCCA’s Chief Legal Officer of the Year for Government/Public Entity.

Ivy Wu, head of legal for Greater China, DXC Technology
Minye (Ivy) Wu serves as the Greater China legal lead of DXC Technology, the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, and sits in the board of DXC Greater China. Over the last 15 years, Ivy has practiced in law firms and held key legal roles in multinational companies, mostly in the TMT sector, focusing on the commercial transactions, corporate governance, dispute management, compliance, and advising on new business initiatives to drive growth. As a leader of a dynamic legal team, Ivy has demonstrated high performing styles to support the team succeed in challenges and exceed the stakeholders’ expectation in an inclusive workplace. Inspired by the recent development of legal technology, Ivy is passionate about applying analytical technologies.

Susan Cattell, senior manager legal operations, AMP
Susan is a highly experienced process improvement professional with over 27 years process and project management experience behind her. In this time she has driven a great deal of efficiencies and business success across many businesses and many teams. She is a qualified Six Sigma Blackbelt, Lean Professional and trained in various Change Management frameworks. Her current role as senior manager legal operations at AMP, a large Australian wealth manager, spans all things legal, operations and tech.  She is passionate about doing things more efficiently and with less cost – whilst still maintaining high levels of service to clients and a strong risk focus.

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