Team size:   380

Career Biography

Dr. Harnier, Gabriel, is General Counsel and Head of SAP Legal at SAP SE, leading a global department of ~400 legal professionals. He joined SAP in January 2023 after 17 years at Bayer, including more than six years as General Counsel. At SAP, his remit is to enable sustainable market success, aligning legal strategy to business needs through risk mitigation, regulatory compliance (e.g., AI and data laws), and pro-active, client-centric business partnering.
He is based in Walldorf, Germany and serves as a legal business partner to the Executive Board.

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

One of our most significant projects this year was the EU Data Act.

We led SAP’s companywide implementation of the EU Data Act, completing rollout ahead of the September 12, 2025 enforcement deadline to reduce operational and compliance risk and support business continuity. This included a go-live on September 1, 2025 for EU member states and a focus on public cloud switching rights.

To achieve this, a cross-functional program was established with workstreams spanning Legal, Government Affairs, Finance, Pricing, Go to Market, Partner Ecosystem, IT, Product Engineering, Support and others, ensuring coherent execution across policies, contracts and systems.

Legal’s contribution combined advisory and governance: we developed a pragmatic interpretation of the law to mitigate business impact while acknowledging areas of regulatory ambiguity; we cautioned teams on antitrust constraints.

On the enablement side, the focus was on operationalising switching rights while safeguarding SAP’s pricing and financial position.

Overall, Legal advised on implementation, completed rollout ahead of entry into force, and aligned policies, tools, and training to minimise exposure while protecting business interests.

 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?

AI has begun to meaningfully reshape how the legal team operates, though its full potential is still emerging.

We are using Microsoft Copilot across the whole SAP Legal organisation to gain efficiency in everyday operational work like meeting minutes, email drafting, finding information etc.

We are also leveraging GenAI to transform legal operations by automating routine tasks, enabling instant answers to legal queries, and streamlining contract and compliance processes.

Integrated tools like eLawyer (from Legal for Legal) and AskQ2C (from Legal for Sales and other internal clients) enhance efficiency, reduce complexity, and free legal experts to focus on strategic work.

The GenAI projects already delivered measurable gains: up to 5% productivity improvement and projected cost savings of €0.7m annually through faster contract cycles, reduced drafting costs, and improved compliance. We aim at significantly accelerating these efficiency gains in 2026.