How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

In times of instability or crisis, effective legal management is crucial for safeguarding an organisation’s operations, reputation, and long-term viability. This framework outlines strategic legal practices that strengthen resilience and enable swift, compliant, and coordinated responses to disruption.

Companies must first establish a crisis-ready legal framework through risk mapping, scenario planning, and regular legal audits. Proactively identifying vulnerabilities in contracts, compliance, employment law, and cybersecurity helps prepare for a range of crisis scenarios.

Key legal documents should be reviewed and reinforced—particularly force majeure, termination clauses, and business continuity provisions. Regulatory compliance must remain a priority as laws evolve quickly during crises. Contractual and supply chain risks should be re-evaluated, with legal strategies ready for renegotiation or dispute resolution. Additionally, strong governance and legal documentation of crisis decisions are critical to ensure board compliance and ethical leadership.

Finally, post-crisis legal reviews are essential. These should include litigation risk assessments, policy updates, and improvements to crisis protocols based on legal learnings. By embedding legal resilience into crisis planning, organisations can reduce legal exposure, maintain compliance, and emerge from disruption more adaptable and secure.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Understanding the business is the main key of success. This is not only limited to the core business but rather understanding the businesses of the whole supply chain. Being an in-house lawyer is not just about being good at remembering laws and regulations, but adaptations and usage are the crucial factors for successful in-house lawyers. One would also need to anticipate regulatory or legal trends that could impact the business. A top modern in-house counsel should translate legalese into plain English for non-lawyers by being precise, quick, and firm whilst maintaining a friendly environment.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

AI and automation are revolutionising day-to-day legal practice. At PepsiCo, we have also leverage tools to help drive documents reviews and analyses, legal research, approval processes, and files storage of which I have helped the company to launch a system called “LawPEP” for Southeast Asia, North Asia, Pacific Islands markets.

Apart from AI, more and more companies are now prioritising sustainability and ethical governance to support the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution 70/1, Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Hence, ESG laws play a big role across all companies, especially multinational corporations.