How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure organisational resilience?

Companies today operate in a regulatory and legal environment of ever-increasing complexity. Fast-changing markets and VUCA business environments create even more needs for agile and flexible organisations. The legal and compliance function helps anticipate and navigate these complexities and, through cross-functional cooperation and proactive involvement, provides solutions and expert guidance on legal and compliance matters.

The adoption of a customer-focused approach (for Bayer, a focus on patients, farmers and consumers) plays a crucial role for the legal and compliance function to be able to foster a resilient organisation and to support its business strategies.

Continuous monitoring of the surrounding business environment and its corresponding regulatory and legal context and the needs the latter is called to address allows timely and efficient support of the organisation’s strategies and substantially facilitates a customer-focused approach.

Moreover, the existence of holistic centralised support on legal and compliance matters of a general character and/or of a recurring nature through centralised service centres and platforms allows the local legal and compliance functions to concentrate more effectively on non-standard and strategic tasks.

In summary, customer focus, business acumen and know-how, cross-functional cooperation and proactive involvement, along with an appropriate structural design for the function, allow the legal department to support and ensure a resilient and flexible business organisation.

What do you see as the biggest challenge or opportunity for in-house legal teams in 2025, and how are you preparing for it?

In 2025 and onwards, I see the biggest challenge and opportunity for in-house legal teams as the smart and responsible use of artificial intelligence. AI is already changing how companies work, make decisions, manage information, and serve customers. For legal teams, this means we need to adapt quickly. AI is an opportunity because it can help us work faster, manage our workload better, and focus more on strategic topics. At the same time, it is also a challenge because it brings new legal, ethical, and practical risks that need to be understood and managed carefully.

For in-house legal teams, one of the most important goals is to be a strong business partner. Business does not only need legal advice that is technically correct; it needs advice that is clear, practical, timely, and connected to business priorities. Legal teams are often involved in many topics at the same time, including contracts, compliance, data privacy, regulatory matters, disputes, governance, digital projects, and strategic initiatives. This makes time management more important than ever. We need to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on the issues where legal judgement, business understanding, and risk assessment truly add value.

This is where AI can create a real opportunity. If used in the right way, AI can support legal teams with routine or time-consuming work, such as preparing first drafts, summarising documents, comparing contract clauses, organising information, supporting research, and improving knowledge sharing. This can help lawyers save time and work more efficiently. More importantly, it can create more space for legal teams to work closely with the business, understand its goals, identify risks earlier, and support better decision-making.

However, AI is also a challenge. We cannot simply rely on AI tools without careful review. AI can produce answers that sound convincing but may be incomplete, inaccurate, or not suitable for a specific situation. There are also important risks around confidentiality, personal data, intellectual property, bias, cybersecurity, and compliance with new laws and regulations. In-house legal teams therefore have an important role in helping the business understand not only what AI can do, but also where its limits are. We need to support innovation, but in a responsible and controlled way.

To prepare for this, in-house legal teams should build a strong basic understanding of AI, develop clear and practical rules for its use, and encourage responsible experimentation. We should also look at how AI can improve our own time management by helping with routine tasks, prioritisation, and access to information. At the same time, we should continue developing as business partners by communicating clearly, asking the right questions, understanding business priorities, and giving advice that is practical, balanced, and solution-oriented.

In my view, the legal teams that will be most successful in 2025 and onwards are those that combine legal expertise with curiosity, flexibility, and business understanding. AI should not replace human judgement, but it can support better and faster legal work. If we use it responsibly, AI can help in-house legal teams become more efficient, more strategic, and more valuable partners to the business.

I feel privileged to work in an organisation like Bayer, which offers a comprehensive framework relating to AI. Having clear guidance, resources, and support helps us approach AI with confidence and responsibility, while offering a strong foundation to use new technologies in a thoughtful way.