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Dr Miyu Lee, legal director of Klarna Group, waxes lyrical about the ‘exceptional field’ she and her team are working in, which she regards as ‘one of the most exciting for an in-house lawyer to operate in because it is very fast-paced and rapidly growing’. It is by no means easy, however. Given the ‘tech-focused, agile, state-of-the-art’ nature of the teams work, combined with operating in one of the most difficult regulatory environments imaginable – and one that is not necessarily geared up for a forward-thinking company given it is based around established banking systems which Klarna Group looks to supersede – means that the team only recruits the most suitable lawyers. Dr Lee says that to succeed in this environment, which she sees as extremely appealing to those who are able to manage its demands, an in-house counsel must ‘be able to move on from just doing legal research; one must act in an agile way and be able to create exciting products’. It is this that allows Klarna’s in-house legal team to maintain an extremely significant role in the company’s fortunes; external counsel simply do not understand the business to the same level as its own legal team. ‘External lawyers will often just say something cannot be done’, says Dr Lee. ‘Offering business focused advice with viable solutions is the most difficult part of our job, and must be trained over the course of years, so it is understandable we would be able to do this better than external advisors.’