Team size: three in Kuwait and three outside Kuwait 

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

My approach combines scenario planning, contract optionality, and regulatory horizon-scanning. We map critical exposures – counterparty, logistics, sanctions, FX, and political risk – and embed pre-agreed playbooks, including force-majeure and hardship protocols, step-in/exit mechanics, and credit/security enhancements, into key contracts.

Operationally, the Legal team sits in the crisis cell alongside Trading, Finance, and Operations to ensure decisions are both legally robust and commercially timely. We maintain active dialogue with regulators, diversify routes and counterparties, and pre-clear contingency structures. This linkage of legal risk metrics with commercial KPIs supports continuity, liquidity protection, and reputational integrity.

The Legal team also co-led a contract standardisation and risk-pricing project across group trading and EPC agreements. We re-engineered templates – including credit terms, sanctions representations, change-in-law clauses, and dispute venues – and introduced a deal-risk score that gates approvals. The result was reduced cycle times, improved collateral coverage, and fewer escalations, directly impacting margin protection and capital efficiency. 

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

We default to in-house for business-proximate work – commercial contracting, policy, and day-to-day disputes – to preserve speed and context. We brief external counsel when we require specialist forum expertise, local regulatory insight, conflict-free advocacy in high-value disputes, or additional capacity during peak periods.

Selection and performance criteria include matter fit, lead partner quality, bench depth, responsiveness, clear case strategy and budgets, willingness to operate within established playbooks, and measurable outcomes such as milestones achieved, settlement value preserved, and precedents set. Post-matter reviews inform future panel selection.