What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

I actively contributed to ISO certification efforts, with responsibility for legal compliance, procurement and supplier management. I established structured, auditable processes with no deviations, ensuring that legal and compliance requirements were embedded in day‑to‑day operations rather than treated as formalities.

I also led and structured procurement and vendor governance processes, ensuring consistency across legal, compliance, security and commercial requirements. I worked to strengthen supplier management practices to support regulatory compliance, operational resilience, and transparency.

I actively commented on new legislative proposals (Norwegian and EU law) on behalf of the company, ensuring that issues relevant to our business and industry were clearly highlighted. I contributed a practical, industry‑informed perspective to the regulatory process, with the aim of helping ensure that new legislation is workable in practice and aligned with how the sector actually operates.

I delivered consistent, responsive and business‑oriented legal support across the entire organisation. I worked closely with teams across sales, operations, technology, security, procurement, and management. What I am most proud of, is the collaboration with colleagues across all business areas and of helping legal become a practical enabler rather than a bottleneck.

A key theme across all my work has been consciously trying to align the “map and the terrain”: not only identifying and explaining legal requirements, but also actively helping the organisation implement them in practice. I have been working cross functionally to embed compliance into existing processes, tools, and decision making. I work towards making compliance easier to follow and part of how we naturally operate, rather than something imposed from the outside.

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

A modern in‑house counsel combines strong legal expertise with deep business understanding. The role is not only to identify legal risk, but also to enable the business to move forward safely and efficiently. The ability to distinguish between theoretical risk and acceptable, managed risk is essential.

This requires the ability to translate complex legal and regulatory requirements into practical, workable solutions that fit how the organisation operates — aligning the “map and the terrain.” A pragmatic, solution‑oriented mindset, clear communication and close cross‑functional collaboration are essential.

At the core, the modern in‑house counsel is a trusted business partner: proactive, commercially aware, comfortable with change and focused on making compliance and risk management an integrated, natural part of how the business works.

What key trends – and challenges – should in-house lawyers be monitoring over the next year?

Over the next year, in‑house lawyers should closely monitor regulatory expansion, increasing complexity and rising expectations of practical implementation.

A key trend is the continued growth of crosscutting regulation – particularly in areas such as cybersecurity, resilience, data protection, ESG, procurement and supply‑chain accountability (e.g. NIS2, security legislation, sustainability requirements). The challenge is not just understanding these rules, but also embedding them into existing business processes in a scalable and workable way.

At the same time, businesses are moving faster and under greater commercial pressure. This requires in‑house lawyers to be more pragmatic and commercially attuned, providing clear recommendations under uncertainty rather than theoretical risk assessments.

Another important trend is increased scrutiny of third‑party risk, supplier governance and operational resilience, placing legal closer to procurement, security and operations than ever before.

Finally, in‑house lawyers face rising expectations to be business partners and enablers, not gatekeepers – helping the organisation navigate change, manage risk proactively and make compliance a natural part of how the business operates.