About

When describing Peter Macheiner, observers mostly use two adjectives: ‘determined’ and ‘committed’. He heads the legal department at synlab, a company that provides laboratory services in 25 jurisdictions in Europe and the Middle East and with 7,000 employees. The outstanding lawyer, who in his free time enjoys the challenge of a cycling marathon, does not only head the legal department but has built and structured it from the very beginning. A highlight in his career has been a large scale project across departments where he ‘bridged the gap between legal advice and legal management on the one hand and motivating employees from a variety of departments to give more than their very best on the other hand’. A particular challenge for any in-house counsel is ‘to break down complex legal issues in a basic manner that focuses on commercial aspects’. His work brings the daily challenge to work ‘in a variety of jurisdictions in a wide range of legal areas’. Law firms should ‘put even more emphasis on the underlying commercial drivers’.