Team size: 11  

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

Staying calm and reflective is crucial to maintain clear oversight and provide stability to management and the business. Prioritise and triage activities, and consider suspending low-risk processes to ensure speed and efficiency. 

What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws?

All projects undergo security and privacy review before launch. In my experience, transformation projects run more smoothly and benefit from involving the team at an early stage, even seeking their input and ideas. Early team involvement ensures practical insights and smooth adoption.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

As an in-house counsel, unlike external counsel, I cannot gain prestige through special mandates. However, I value the opportunities to take part in panels, such as those with ministries, where I can contribute to the knowledge and opinion of state administrations, as well as the many positive comments from clients highlighting and appreciating my role in negotiations and meetings.

Given the current geopolitical shifts and growing uncertainties around international free trade, has your company’s risk profile evolved, and are you taking measures to address these challenges?

As a security provider and part of an international group with a large number of personnel, we are affected by geopolitical crises in many ways, as they are reflected in our workforce as well as in client demands. We are evolving our enterprise risk management to refine our risk assessments and screening, with a view to predictive analytics for upcoming critical events. Trade restrictions and geopolitical shifts affect our supply chain, particularly in relation to the availability and reliability of technology for security services, such as cameras and detection devices.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

I can see a shift in legal work and culture connected to the faster-evolving, AI-driven automation and digitisation of work within the business. Legal teams are at the core of the business and need to create new interfaces in both digital and personal ways to become more embedded and keep up with the agility of automated processes in other functions, such as sales, finance, and operations.

How can general counsel foster a corporate culture that supports ESG principles and compliance across all levels of the organisation?

General Counsel should lead by example, actively promoting ESG principles through visible engagement and business-orientated communication.

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?

There is no day on which we do not use AI in our daily activities. AI has, and continues to, play an important role in coping with increased workloads due to new regulations and requirements. It has reduced turnaround time on tasks such as contract review and has helped us focus on more specialised items. Without AI, the personal cost would have increased.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?

I deeply care for the people in my organisation and business. It is important for me to provide stability and contribute to our positive company culture, as well as, of course, our business goals. My company represents and employs people from all backgrounds, and supporting them is an honour.

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?

We make decisions based on risk, available in-house resources, and knowledge. Currently, we evaluate external performance based on budgeted versus actual costs and the cost of similar projects.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

We are building performance-based KPIs in the legal team that can be used to identify areas where other processes could benefit. For example, analysing the probability of winning and actual win rates, together with the number of contracts reviewed by the legal team, showed that over 40% of tenders reviewed are not won. Optimising the sales process to focus on higher win rates, while supporting low-probability opportunities with more standardised material, improves sales quality and frees legal resources for other advice. Similarly, implementing PowerBI for litigation allowed us to analyse the structure of claims and the build-up of provisions. Suggesting a different approach to provision building can improve financial performance.

Additionally, we are developing training sessions as interactive knowledge experiences rather than traditional classroom-style lessons, including material that emphasises the existence of legal and compliance processes as part of our quality and value proposition to clients.

Looking forward, what trends do you foresee in the legal landscape over the next 5–10 years that companies should prepare for?

Legal teams cannot remain as stand-alone technical legal experts but will be required to become more embedded in the business as trusted partners. AI will drive performance and automation in legal advice, including self-help legal tools for the commercial teams, and will shift the role of legal counsel to someone who oversees and provides support on pivotal, on-point questions rather than general advice. Depending on geopolitical and market developments, teams should be prepared to participate in cost-containment measures within the business.