Maciej Szczepański – GC Powerlist
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Central and Eastern Europe 2019

Consumer products

Maciej Szczepański

Head of legal | OLX Poland

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Central and Eastern Europe 2019

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Maciej Szczepański

Head of legal | OLX Poland

About

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

In the last two years, OLX operations in Poland mainly focused on the development of internal structures, which resulted in nearly doubling the number of employees working on business and product development, as well as technology and corporate functions. However, this process also involved the legal department in some local investment transaction operations. Significant project for the NASPERS capital group, include the key transaction resulting in the listing of “Prosus” on Euronext Amsterdam, and through that creating Europe’s largest listed consumer internet company. With assets valued in excess of US$100bn, Prosus ranks among the top 10 consumer internet companies globally and is Europe’s largest by asset value.

The group focuses on long-term value creation
by building leading companies that improve people’s daily lives in high-growth markets. It is a strategic investor and an operator of fast-growing consumer internet businesses, particularly
focused on online classifieds, payments and fintech, and food delivery. Every day, millions of people use the products and services of companies in the Prosus family. In the near future, at the operational level, this process may also require the implementation, streamlining and raising compliance standards in the scope of a capital group that has not been listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange yet. This is associated with regulatory EU obligations and the involvement of local teams.

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

Working in a changing multicultural environment is primarily a communication challenge that requires rapid adaptation to change, which is continuous and in principle unavoidable. In particular, working for a group that provides its services via the internet to hundreds of millions of clients around the world creates many challenges for us internal lawyers, but also opportunities to achieve our common goals with business teams.

In my opinion, one of the key challenges is the ability to quickly and accurately analyse business needs. Equally important is the ability to recognise them early enough and create a “legal product” out of them, which on the one hand will correspond to the business assumptions of the proposed solutions that come from various international markets, but on the other hand will be legal and close to the pre-proposed assumption.

Therefore, agility and flexibility in navigating between business and the law means that the daily challenge is not so much the elimination of risk itself, but its management and the process of minimising it. Multicultural experiences and an understanding of what “law” is and how it works in a given market means that special attention should be paid to communication and expression of thoughts, so as to avoid confusion. However, this is not uniquely associated with the domestic market for the provision of services, but concerns all sectors of the provision of cross-border legal assistance, and it is worth remembering this every day.

If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or GC what would it be and why?

Every day I follow the principle that the customer is the most important person. Therefore all tasks that I or my team undertake are based on the principle of customer centricity. This means that in order to do my job well, I try to get to know the expectations and goals of business teams as much as possible. It is worth remembering that the main purpose of the work of internal lawyers is to facilitate the work of others in the organisation. In my opinion, success always consists of three main elements – in-depth and insightful legal knowledge supported by relevant experience, highly developed interpersonal skills and knowledge and interests related to the work of enterprises, including a given sector which definitely goes far beyond the “law”.


FOCUS ON… CHANGE

Working in an international and technologically variable environment is not an easy or simple workplace for a lawyer. The continuous development of technology and the computerisation of society means that there is no room for boredom or predictability.

As a rule, legal services are associated with the work of a lawyer in a predictable environment, where many years of mechanisms of practice allow [lawyers] to advise, increasing the legal security of the business. In the case of an in-house lawyer working in a global technology company, we often talk about risk management, not the typical elimination of
legal challenges. The lack of well-established legislation and jurisprudence – which could determine the directions of practice and
proceedings in the scope of admissibility of
given legal solutions – not only in domestic but
also on European grounds, often increases uncertainty in decision-making. Knowledge and experience become even more important in such
an environment. Innovation and creativity of business solutions in a digital environment while relying on legal knowledge alone is inadequate. Adapting often theoretical legislative solutions to complex models of programming algorithms, programming possibilities and market expectations or standards means that a “digital lawyer” needs legal, business and IT knowledge.

This means that one of the basic tools of our work is the analysis of trends and solutions in the scope of the admissibility of solutions from the world of “digital law” in other markets around the world. Economic and business knowledge is also required to understand common market practices, which have the ability to adapt to the digital market, and in an environment that will be compliant with legal solutions or directional assumptions in a given geographic market.

I believe that in order to face systematic challenges related to the development of technology, it is necessary to use the “legal magic in-house triangle” (legal knowledge, business oriented approach and soft skills), which allows you to effectively navigate between business expectations, possible risks and legal solutions. Lawyers should also focus on building long-term and partner relations with business team members. In addition, lawyers themselves should focus on goals, self-development and multi-faceted legal and business education. All this allows us to implement effective solutions in the field of legal security and provides real support for the business in the modern economy.

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