About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

My largest project was the acquisition of the core business of Raiffeisen Bank Polska, achieved by the demerger of this bank. I participated in all the project stages since autumn 2017, including a due diligence process and negotiating a transaction agreement, including full integration of tasks and teams, as well as the migration of products and IT systems scheduled for November 2019.

What changes have you made to the workings of the legal department during your time in your current role? How has that affected the wider company?

The main changes that have been made pertain to the full centralisation of services provided to the branches as legal inquiries submitted by all the branches of the Bank are processed at the head office level. The second change involves introduction of an IT system to process enquiries sent by an internal client and a database of court cases together with a module to update the value of provisions.

What do you do personally to promote diversity and inclusion in your company? In your team?

Diversity is truly crucial but it cannot be perceived only as a gender issue. A good team is a combination of various personalities, ages as well as experience and these are building blocks for my team. I do not hire women or men but I look for good lawyers and nice people. Despite this, or maybe thanks to such an approach, 44% of my team are women, while the age range varies from 27 to 60 years.

What are the unique challenges, if any, of working in-house for a foreign multinational in Poland?

Every corporation is different – I had an opportunity to cooperate in the same job position with Rabobank and now BNP Paribas. Each of these entities has different expectations, different reporting requirements, different scope of supervision and unification. Advantages include a possibility to exchange experience or share best practice, while difficulties comprise unification, sometimes understanding specificity of the country and existing solutions.

What do you feel is the best way to get more women into in-house legal leadership positions?

I know this is unpopular but I am not a feminist, or even more, I do not support parities. In my career path, I never encountered a glass ceiling; at the age of 30 I became vice-president of a national investment fund, soon afterwards – vice-president of a holding company in which I supervised legal service of over 50 entities. In my view, the most important thing for a woman is support of her family in her career; if we want to be both mothers and leaders, then in this first function someone must help us, assist us in daily chores, otherwise it will not work, or we need to choose to realise our full potential once children have grown up.

FOCUS ON… Quo vadis

Quo vadis? This is a question we ask ourselves today, in a changing world where the digital revolution forces economic and social changes, which the law and justice system has difficulties following. What should be the role of general counsel in this new world and what are the expectations of us?

The first challenge is digitalisation; a change taking place on many levels. Digitalisation forces us to think about law in completely new ways when we give opinions on products prepared by our business colleagues, when we consider together new unknown risks or when we think about how to provide traditional banking services virtually, but in a way that is safe for the customer, where the use of the customers’ personal data enables us to personalise products that they are offered. Digitalisation is a process; however, a regulation on electronic signatures is not enough as we still need the procedures and devices for the recipient of such a power of attorney. To give an example, we wanted to introduce powers of attorney with electronic signature for the network of relationship managers in our bank’s branches. We prepared the process, but we can use it only partially, as it turns out that in spite of existing regulations, the courts are not prepared to accept such powers of attorney.

Digitalisation also affects our working tools. It is common today to use databases containing sets of legal regulations and rulings. We increasingly often use IT systems to provide services to our internal clients, create databases of information on court proceedings or manage relationships with law firms. We are gradually introducing bots to write simple contracts, but what about tomorrow? We will probably have AI-prepared opinions, how will it change our work?

The provisions of law are another challenge. As EU lawyers, we have to deal with an increasing number of regulations written in an increasingly less precise language. We have numerous examples of the defective  implementation of the provisions of directives, leading to disputes and court proceedings. Another issue is the growing changeability of law, not always resulting from the attempts to keep up with changing reality. In the financial market, there’s a problem of decreasing liberty and increasing number of regulations, but while the aim is to protect consumer rights, the question is whether this good purpose will lead to over-regulation.

The third challenge is the new generation. I have already mentioned that law is becoming increasingly more complicated, and clients are more frequently millennials. They are accustomed to simple messages, likes, images and one click. How can this be reconciled with the language of the law? It is difficult to meet obligations stemming from regulations and reach young clients, in particular when the service offered is a financial one. We therefore have to change the presentation of the agreement.

The fourth challenge is for service providers – fintech and start-ups. These businesses propose interesting solutions but are difficult partners for us lawyers [as they] often do not understand the law. They do not want to learn more about it and think they do not need agreements, clauses, documents or approvals. We often hear “let’s do a proof of concept, then we’ll see”, then the company often agrees and it is a success, but then we are sitting and thinking about how to safeguard this idea. How can the safety of clients, transactions, rights, disbursed funds be guaranteed?

To paraphrase the advertising slogan of my employer – “we are the lawyers of a changing world”. How can we survive this change? In my opinion, there is only one method, a quite traditional one: We need to create a good team.