How do you ensure the legal function supports business resilience during periods of uncertainty or disruption?

To support business resilience during periods of uncertainty, I strongly believe the legal function must transition to a strategic partner ahead of the risks. In my view, this relies on three major pillars: Anticipation, Agility, and Proactive Value Creation.

Anticipation: Legal teams must develop a true risk culture by identifying regulatory, geopolitical, or economic uncertainties before they impact the company. By conducting regular monitoring and simulating scenarios with concrete training and practical exercises, for example, mock regulatory audits/inquiries. Legal must also stress-test key contracts, such as force majeure, termination, or hardship clauses — to avoid unwanted surprises.

Agility: During disruptive periods, speed of response is critical. The legal function needs to streamline approval processes and establish fast-track decision circuits for urgent matters. A key driver here is, in my opinion, standardisation and self-service: providing business teams with pre-approved playbook options, fallback clauses, and automated templates for routine matters allows the legal team to focus on complex strategic threats. Furthermore, deep cross-functional integration, embedding legal advisers directly into operational crisis units, strategy committees, and executive task forces, ensures real-time legal alignment with business shifts and prevents legal from becoming a bottleneck.

Proactive Value Creation: Rather than simply highlighting risks, legal counsel must deliver actionable, business-aligned solutions. Being a proactive partner means offering bold yet measured legal alternatives, restructuring key partnerships when market conditions demand it, or renegotiating existing commitments to protect the company’s cash flow and profitability.

In the face of increasing regulation and scrutiny, what are the biggest compliance challenges keeping GCs up at night?

In my perspective, while General Counsels (GCs) face, of course, a wide range of regulatory hurdles, competition law in the era of artificial intelligence and AI agents has quickly emerged as one of their most complex and high-stakes challenges, amongst the following.

First, control of real-time data & information exchange.

AI platforms frequently aggregate data from multiple market participants, who can be direct competitors — to train models or provide analytics. For GCs, ensuring that these shared systems do not facilitate explicit or subtle algorithmic collusion or illegal information sharing between competitors is a major operational headache.

Second, liability and intent with autonomous AI Agents.

As organisations deploy AI agents to handle negotiation, pricing, or purchasing, determining legal responsibility becomes murky. Standard competition law relies on demonstrating intention or agreement between parties; establishing liability when an autonomous agent acts or communicates in anti-competitive ways presents unprecedented legal exposure.

Third, managing enquiries from Authorities.

Competition authorities worldwide (such as the EU Commission or FTC) are increasingly focusing on AI-driven practices. Responding to investigations involving complex, “black-box” machine learning algorithms requires continuous auditing, technical monitoring, and clear compliance frameworks that traditional legal teams are still adapting to build.

What is the most overlooked skill or mindset that today’s in-house lawyers need to succeed at the highest level?

While business acumen is now expected, the real game-changer is pre-emptive alignment. High-performing in-house counsel do not just wait for questions; they anticipate where the business is going and align with key decision-makers early on. They anticipate upcoming challenges and build consensus with key stakeholders long before issues escalate. The ability to drive early alignment, paired with a mindset focused on practical, innovative solutions, is, in my opinion, the single most defining factor for high-level success.