Team size (optional):  20  

What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

The team has successfully handled a potential trademark infringement dispute by coordinating with the trademark owner to reach a settlement, thereby avoiding the risk of core brand products being removed from shelves. In a criminal-civil overlapping case of a subsidiary, the team successfully recharacterised a potential official duty crime as a non-official duty crime. In three civil retrial cases, retrial applications were successfully filed, ultimately resulting in the dismissal of the original unfavourable effective judgments.

In a product quality dispute, the team efficiently assisted the business in managing the public opinion crisis and avoided high liquidated damages, despite initially facing both substantial penalties and potential negative publicity. During a subsidiary dissolution and liquidation project, the team helped formulate multiple rounds of employee disposal plans, ultimately resolving employee placement issues without labour disputes.

For an overseas-to-domestic capital increase project involving multi-jurisdictional legal issues and multiple corporate levels, the team provided legal opinions and solutions, successfully completing the project. In a real estate ownership confirmation project, the team traced complex historical property transactions and assisted the business team in smoothly identifying ownership. Additionally, the team conducted a special anti-monopoly compliance initiative for the brand distribution business, successfully preventing potential vertical monopoly risks.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

During periods of instability or crisis, we need to identify, assess, and address legal risks proactively, promptly, and systematically. First, a crisis response team should be rapidly assembled, and the team should create contingency plans with clear decision-making processes and defined responsibilities. Secondly, I recommend reviewing existing contracts to evaluate force majeure or change-of-circumstances clauses and to analyse liability exposure in order to maintain compliance. Thirdly, the business team should adjust operations to align with new legal frameworks and pursue contract renegotiations if necessary. Last but not least, to strengthen internal communication and training, the legal team should provide targeted legal training, especially on compliance and risk management.

AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact in how your legal team works in this time?​​

Exactly, I agree that AI will have a meaningful impact on our daily in-house work. If we examine the job descriptions of an in-house counsel—for example, contract review, compliance, dispute resolution, IP, and legal training—AI is already involved in various aspects. AI contract review is now widely used in China. On 3 October, the AAA-ICDR took the lead in introducing AI-related applications in the arbitration field. I truly believe that legal AI will bring significant benefits to the legal industry. We need to embrace both the change and the challenge.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

When deciding whether to engage external legal services, I usually consider the following factors: the complexity of the legal issues, the professional capabilities required, cost efficiency, and the independence and objectivity of the service provider. The main criteria for evaluating the performance of external legal services include service quality and professional competence, service efficiency and responsiveness, communication, collaboration and attitude, cost control and value creation, and adherence to professional ethics and confidentiality obligations.