About

Volker Daum has been general counsel to B. Braun Group for five years and heads a team of 52 employees, most of which are based abroad, as well as an additional nine patent lawyers. A particular challenge was the creation of a global legal network incorporating all of the company’s 20 legal departments and to ensure the ongoing communication, both nationally and internationally: a huge task for Daum in a company with over 45,000 employees and subsidiaries in 50 countries. Daum has also standardised the department’s work by introducing Legal Case Management Software and he currently runs a “Legal School” for the in-house team; ‘there is no day without new challenges’, he summarises. The company was founded in 1839 and has remained family-owned to this day. Maybe this is partly why Daum expects that external counsel ‘should familiarise themselves more with a company’s internal workings’. He also sees the need for more innovative fee structures and regards hourly fees as ‘outdated’.