Team size:   120

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

My approach is grounded in preparation, coordination, and clear communication, with a strong focus on business continuity. It begins with conducting thorough legal risk assessments to identify regulatory, contractual, and operational vulnerabilities, followed by the implementation of preventive and mitigating measures. Establishing a robust documentation and compliance framework is essential, as it ensures consistency, traceability, and accountability throughout the crisis response.

Clear and structured communication within the legal team is a priority, enabling rapid alignment and decisive action. At the same time, legal strategy is closely aligned with business needs so that responses are both compliant and practical, allowing the organisation to react quickly while minimising disruption. I ensure that senior management and key stakeholders are kept regularly informed of developments, risks, and actions taken, supporting transparency and informed decision-making.

Collaboration is critical during periods of instability. I work closely with employees, regulators, customers, and suppliers to manage expectations, maintain trust, and resolve issues efficiently. Ongoing training also plays an important role; key personnel receive periodic awareness sessions on legal obligations and crisis protocols to ensure preparedness before issues arise. Finally, I maintain comprehensive records of all decisions and actions taken during a crisis, which supports accountability and enables meaningful post-crisis review and continuous improvement.

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? 

Robust contract lifecycle management system is key to the effective performance of a legal department. I have successfully designed and implemented a global digital contract management system in the organisation with service levels and escalation mechanism for the in-house legal team. Effective data processing and transfer agreements are put in place to ensure the application data privacy and protection laws. With the AI and GenAI technologies evolving, effective guidelines and guardrails were implemented to ensure that such technologies are used cautiously within and outside the organisation.

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?

In the last couple of years, business environment has been extremely volatile with the business community struggling to get new business and growth. In such environment, the legal team can play effective role in supporting the business/sales teams to get business by being flexible in their approach without compromising the quality and organisational standards.

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?   

While it is imperative in certain circumstances to engage or use external legal services, such mergers & acquisition, real estate transactions, litigation etc. my advice to the legal team is that we should as much as possible handle the legal matters in-house. This not only sharpens skill and competency of the legal team, it also puts accountability and improves the decision making ability on each member of the team. Additionally, stakeholders respect and welcome the inhouse advice and support than rely on external legal services.