What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

BAB is a Malaysia-based international offshore energy facilities and services provider with global experience spread across 5 continents. In 2022, the group reorganised its business by integrating its operational Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO), LNG Floating Storage Unit (FSU) and Subsea Construction assets into one business unit and segregating a separate technology, engineering and projects business unit. BAB achieved continued improvement across all aspects of its business in 2022, culminating in the highest full year net profit recorded since its listing on the main market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad in 2011.

The BAB Legal team has provided critical functional support to the business over this recent period of reorganisation and consolidation as management focused on rationalising the business and streamlining its operations. In 2022, a full range of legal advice and support was provided or managed in-house, whether providing transactional support in respect of divestment of non-core assets (including its offshore support vessel fleet), supporting financing activity with respect to its corporate and project loans, advising on critical contractual issues relating to current operating assets, actively participating in and advising on tenders for new projects or providing strategic advice on matters of material legal risk including potentially contentious issues.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

In 2020, our legal team, with the support of the IT function, spearheaded the group’s adoption of a new contract management solution – ContractPodAi. This AI technology platform manages the full life cycle of a contract from initial service request, assignment of lawyer, management of approval gate process, execution of contract via DocuSign through to document management and storing of active contracts and later archival of historical records. This has streamlined processes and materially improved efficiencies by providing immediate access to information/production of reports and ensuring a better consistency of approach to contract review and management across the company globally.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

Developing strong relationships with key stakeholders is critical to the success of any in-house legal function. The general counsel, and each member of their team, needs to devote time to building relationships with all their internal clients. This can’t be achieved overnight but will build over time where the lawyer demonstrates a genuine interest in the nuts and bolts of the business, a desire to learn more about the challenges faced by the business partner and the ability to provide timely, solution-orientated advice and support. It is all about building a strong brand for the legal team, where lawyers are not seen as approval gates or potential roadblocks, but rather as a core member of the broader cross-functional/business “team”, genuinely interested in and focused on creating value for the company and its shareholders. Clearly, as lawyers, we keep an eye out for any risk which has the potential to reputationally or financially destroy value, but these conversations tend to be the exception to the rule and 99% of what we do every day is help the organisation to achieve its commercial objectives.