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

Next to operational challenges throughout the years, in particular on the procurement side, due to events beyond our control such as, but limited to customs issues, or export restrictions, my team is heavily involved in business transformation projects in support of our organisation’s strategic long-term goals.

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

The fundament of your engagement is based on our joint understanding, that we, as in-house counsel, strive every day to be trusted advisors and business partners, and not just corporate ‘naysayers’. To be able to live up to our joint goal, every single team member is expected to get to know our products, operations, and business on the customer as well as on the supplier facing side. With this fundamental understanding of our roles, we are braced to be trusted navigators in any adverse situations, whereby it needs to be understood that enduring any period of instability or crisis successfully is always a cross-functional effort, not a solo effort of legal.

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?

To be frank, we are very much at the beginning of our digital transformation journey, other departments may be more advanced in that respect, but we are planning to implement a full-blown internal project for this challenge, for which we will certainly require support of our IT team, when it comes to technical measures to ensure compliance and we would enter into appropriate contractual terms, to meet our corporate standards and applicable local data privacy requirements.

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?

Given our global supply chain setup, the risk profile of our company has significantly evolved in a riskier direction and trade compliance has gained significant attention, compared to the past. Our teams are all working to mitigate such risks with measures such as localization, or exemptions as far as possible.

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 think the most obvious topics is IA and automation, but as mentioned above trade compliance has certainly gained attention and will certainly remain a hot topic for the next couple years.

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

Be a role model, don´t use ESG programs as fig leave, and start within your own department.

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?

So far not, as we are right at the beginning of our journey, but AI will certainly have a revolutionary effect on inhouse daily business. Also, I firmly believe that AI will increasingly become a strong tool to support inhouse teams, but not a replacement thereof in the nearer future.

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

One of my core beliefs is that we all need to strive for a society that provides an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.

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?

Generally, the first point of contact is always the Legal Department. We will assess whether we can deal with the matter at hand inhouse, or whether we to get external counsel, because the matter requires specific e.g. legal, litigation, or other skills that we don´t have inhouse.

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

War on talents will become increasingly an issue and companies will need to offer more than just flexible working models as a differentiator to attract the right talents. The usage of AI will certainly be a game changer.