| Bayer
Bayer
Bayer maintains a vast and highly capable law patents and compliance (LPC) department with almost unparalleled resources. When taking into account compliance and insurance professionals as well as paralegals and support staff alongside lawyers, the total global headcount for the function is approximately 950 individuals; 110 lawyers are based in Germany. Dr Gabriel Harnier takes on overall responsibility for this “global in-house law firm”, which has taken major steps in recent years to cementing a unifying culture, vision and mission statement for the vast function, as senior counsel Christine Bernard explains: ‘An important challenge was to further align the team of LPC to be “one team – one face – one focus” within Bayer worldwide and to support the business not only as pure legal counsels but also as business partners’.
In order to achieve this, six main tenets of this initiative were adopted: ‘These were the creation of a unifying mission statement and vision for the LPC department, the creation of a knowledge management platform which all team members have access to, a global business partnering project, the creation of the LPC academy as a centre of development and learning, the creation of a strategy and community department and the implementation of a new contract management system including the pre-signing phase’. Externally, Bernard lists just some of the major projects the team has worked on, including the acquisition of Monsanto, the divestiture of Bayer’s shares in Covestro, the preparation and implementation of DSGVO and participation some arbitration cases.
