About

‘As in-house counsel we can no longer content ourselves with just being good lawyers,’ says Elizabeth Colfer. ‘We need to invest time and energy, and factor into our legal analysis the cultural and business aspects of our environment so as to ensure that we are also a valued and reliable business partner’. After successfully setting up a multi-cultural team supporting the business and projects’ teams in the Middle East in her role as deputy general, Colfer joined GDF Suez’s Indonesian office in September 2013. Taking a cross-cultural approach, the multinational, multi-disciplined team focuses on project aspects that potentially span multiple jurisdictions. In Colfer’s view, her biggest achievement in her current role to date has been the seamless transition from the Middle East to Asia-Pacific region and the new professional challenges that this represented. ‘Adapting and responding to the exigencies of different jurisdictional issues whilst actively contributing as a business partner is a challenging but very worthwhile objective,’ Colfer adds.