About

Described as ‘a small team, but a dream team’ by director of legal affairs Vanessa Hespel, the Reed MIDEM legal department believes that ‘being a business partner’ is ‘at the heart of [its] activities’. The company is a world-leading events planning organisation, being particularly renowned for its music industry trade events which are attended by major international recording companies as a matter of course. Its legal team has taken a proactive approach to meeting current challenges: ‘We have had to adapt our working methods in order to be aligned with the strategic priorities of our business and meet the needs of internal operational and organisational challenges. For instance, we have consequently collaborated closely with the communications director on several points to adapt our wording to non-lawyers and have created a new official template for contracts and order forms’, says Hespel. Along with Hespel, who founded the legal team in 2003 and plays an active role in the French corporate lawyer scene through extra-curricular trade organisations and editorial work, the legal team employs a wide range of legal talent. Ekaterina Joukova and Julie Léon-Dufour, both senior legal counsel, came in for particular praise. Joukova, who is an expert in commercial and intellectual property legal matters, places ‘open-mindedness, innovation and empathy’ at the heart of what she does. Léon-Dufour, who joined the team in 2008, possesses a wealth of expertise in IT laws, new technologies and data protection regulations, and brings a ‘tenacious and rigorous’ approach to the team. Utilising this talent, the Reed MIDEM team has ‘digitised the validation of internal workflows, implemented electronic signing of contracts and created new templates to facilitate contract negotiation’, in response to existing and expanding compliance demands.