About

Now the Central European general counsel for Deloitte, Michaela Jandova has proven herself time and again to be capable of succeeding at a wide range of in-house legal roles during the course of her career. Starting her career with telecommunications company Oskar in 2000, she was also employed with Vodafone and IBM before making the move to Deloitte in November 2006. ‘When I joined Deloitte Central Europe’, Jandova explains, ‘our in-house legal team consisted of just two lawyers: one paralegal and one assistant based in Prague. We did not have in-house legal teams based in countries. My role was to build the trust of my internal clients, and we also expanded the team significantly. I am currently leading a team of approximately 30 in-house legal counsel spread across 18 countries, and supporting more than 60 offices in Central Europe’. She outlines her usual responsibilities as follows: ‘Complex transactions are my daily bread and butter, and I support my clients in complex litigations and regulatory challenges. Prominent examples of the latter include the GDPR implementation, new EU Audit regulation, along with many other client and corporate matters’. In order to tackle this demanding workload, Jandova mentions a number of must-have characteristics for members of her legal team: ‘An in-house counsel should be flexible, business oriented, understand the business operations of their clients, and be able to explain their views in a simple and non-legalistic way. As well, an in-house counsel has to have the trust of their clients and always be ready to help. I would say that we live our company’s and client’s lives and are accessible constantly, as a good in-house counsel has to be’.