Team size: 24

Major legal advisors (optional):

Jurisdictions your role covers (optional):

Legal team’s annual budget (not to be published, and entirely optional):

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our legal team is the inhouse legal team of HEARTLAND and BESTSELLER but also provides legal guidance to a wide range of other companies and enterprises within the HEARTLAND group. Our team is therefore on a day-to-day basis involved in many diverse legal issues in both nature, size and complexity within corporate law and commercial contracts, IP issues, IT and Sourcing tasks, GDPR and competition law and real estate M&A, construction law and lease agreements as well as M&A, capital markets and financial regulation.

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?

Our starting point is always to handle legal matters in‑house, and this is made possible by the way our legal team is structured and aligned with the needs of BESTSELLER/HEARTLAND.

Our legal function is composed of several specialised teams: a Commercial team focusing on corporate law and commercial contracts; an IP & Tech team handling intellectual property, IT and sourcing‑related matters; a Compliance team responsible for areas such as GDPR and competition law; a Real Estate team covering real estate M&A, construction law and lease agreements; and dedicated teams specialised in M&A and in capital markets and financial regulation. This breadth of expertise enables us to manage the vast majority of legal matters internally and to support the business across its full value chain.

A key factor behind this approach is our strong belief that effective legal support is built through close relationships with business stakeholders. By working in‑house, we are able to provide risk‑based, pragmatic legal advice, where the business objective is always at the centre of the discussion. This proximity allows us to understand commercial realities, timing pressures and strategic priorities, and to tailor legal guidance accordingly.

External legal services are therefore used selectively and strategically. Typically, we engage external counsel where a matter requires highly specialised expertise within a narrow legal field, where there is significant time pressure, or where internal capacity is temporarily constrained—for example in large or complex transactions, cross‑border matters, or novel regulatory issues.

When we do engage external advisors, their performance is evaluated against clear criteria. These include legal quality and expertise, responsiveness and ability to meet deadlines, commercial and business understanding, and their ability to provide clear, actionable advice rather than purely theoretical analysis. Cost transparency and predictability are also important factors, as is the ability to collaborate effectively with our in‑house teams and adapt to our way of working.

What are some of the biggest legal or regulatory challenges currently facing your industry, and how is your team preparing to address them?

One of the biggest challenges we currently face is the rapid use of AI tools by non‑legal experts across the business. AI is increasingly used to draft content, assess risks or even “solve” legal questions without involving a legal expert. While this can feel efficient, it also introduces legal risks around IP data protection, consumer law and regulatory compliance and while the output may not result directly in violation of applicable regulation, we have seen cases where the use of AI has resulted in a weaker legal position.

Our legal team is addressing this by positioning Legal not as a bottleneck, but as a value‑adding partner. We provide clear, practical AI guidance, define when AI use is acceptable and when our legal team must be involved, and focus on high‑risk areas where AI cannot replace legal judgment, context and accountability. At the same time, we communicate the value our legal team brings compared to AI—such as understanding business strategy, managing regulatory risk across markets, and protecting the brand. Our aim is to support innovation while ensuring the business knows when AI is a helpful tool, and when legal expertise is essential.