Team size: 18

Major advisor: Mason Hayes & Curran

What are some of the legal challenges that IT companies face in the development and use of emerging technologies in their products?

Meta’s long-term goal is to help build the Metaverse, which will allow people to connect in virtual environments. The Metaverse vision is that ‘anything you can do in the physical worlds; you can also do in the virtual world,’ for example, work meetings, exercising, even going to gigs and events. In order to build the Metaverse, Meta will need to collaborate with industry partners; it is not something that we can do alone. This will mean lots of innovative partnerships for Meta’s commercial in-house lawyers to work on.

Building the Metaverse will give rise to new and old legal issues. Traditional legal issues such as antitrust and privacy will continue to be acutely relevant in the Metaverse. In particular, privacy will need to be encoded into the Metaverse built from the start. New legal questions and issues will also arise, which will challenge regulators and legislators. Historically, technology regulation and legislation have not always kept pace with the development of technology. The challenge for the Metaverse will be to build regulatory and legislative frameworks that are robust with appropriate penalties, but also foster a culture of innovation.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

The in-house legal industry has massively expanded in Ireland over the last ten years. In-house legal teams like Meta want to hire lawyers specialised in specific areas of legal practice rather than hiring generalists. This trend is likely to continue over time with companies hiring larger, more specialised, in-house legal teams. One challenge for companies will be to ensure inhouse lawyers do not become too niche and are able to expand their specialties to slightly different but compatible subject areas.

Remote work is an interesting trend, but I am not sure that 100 percent remote working will become the norm for in-house teams. As in-house lawyers we need to have a significant amount of face-to-face human interactions to build connections with clients and colleagues, so a 100 percent remote work would not necessarily increase productivity. At Meta, we have adopted a hybrid working arrangement, having the option to work from home and in the office, with a minimum amount of time to be spent in the office. The hope here is that this will give flexibility to workers. Flexible working, not remote working, is likely to be the more enduring trend post pandemic.

Given the growing data protection and privacy landscape, there will also be even more demand for inhouse privacy lawyers. Last, even if you are not an absolute expert, having some amount of expertise or understanding in technologies or tech-related areas will always be a plus for the in-house legal lawyer. Technology can allow lawyers to reduce their time spent on administrative works and to focus on rather challenging areas such as risk management.