About

In 2014 Konica Minolta merged the two legal departments of its European headquarters and its German sales organisation. The resulting department, under the leadership of manager of legal affairs Kai Mielke has since provided its legal advice as a shared service unit to both companies, elevating the quality of the team’s services to a higher level. Besides this, however, Mielke states that ‘the success and good reputation of Konica Minolta´s legal team is based essentially on three factors: the standardisation of in-house contract preparation processes, the reduction of processing times in the handling of inquiries and the observance of a communication style that furthers the legal understanding of non-legal colleagues’. The Konica Minolta legal team has also managed to overcome the prejudices that legal teams often face by other business units, and is now highly regarded by colleagues for its ‘cooperation and pragmatic support’. Owing to a strong, highly positive team culture the team enjoys excellent staff retention, which has allowed it, in Mielke’s opinion, to ‘identify the ever-recurring questions and challenges of other business fields as well and reflect them in its growing template database’. As part of this, ‘great value is attached to represent Konica Minolta’s corporate values in the contractual standards: being open and honest, customer-centric, innovative, passionate, inclusive and collaborative and accountable’. Finally, Mielke speaks on the team taking on further responsibilities for educating the wider company on legal matters and thus improving the legal capabilities of Konica Minolta across the board: ‘To round off the total package, Konica Minolta’s legal team is ambitioned to lift non-legal colleagues reservations towards legal matters. This begins with plain-language explanations in response to legal inquiries and is continued with how-to-tutorials in the company’s intranet and training events regarding recurring and current topics of a general interest. The team always has its fingers on the pulse of the business and reacts to actual demands. Demands, which will increase in a time of corporate change, for which Konica Minolta’s legal team is well prepared and equipped’.