Team size: 10

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

I am not sure if it is something new, but, for me, calmness is still the most important attribute for an in-house counsel. Work will always be stressful and whether it is time pressure because a contract needs to be signed or chaos because something went wrong and the legal function shall solve the issue, it is most important to be calm, polite and listen. Most mistakes happen in my opinion because people get stressed and forget to think about things. But, in the end, whatever you come up with is only as good as it looks the next day when everyone revisits the event and ask if something could have been done better. So, taking the time to make the right decision is paramount and will always be.

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, of which you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful?

I think everyone is aware of AI, and every legal department has probably been bombarded by what felt like hundreds of different providers offering their legal AI solutions. It would therefore be easy to say that this is something to look out for but I would like to offer a different viewpoint for legal departments like mine that are not part of a very large multinational corporation: Be aware that probably 90% of the solutions you see today will not be there tomorrow. The enthusiastic start will inevitably follow a consolidation, and this does not just concern the legal workspace, but all other corporate solutions. It is therefore wise to check if the benefits of a new solution right now would warrant the efforts and potentially sunken costs if you got to do the whole thing again in 2 years’ time. Maybe it is better to sit on the sideline and let others be the beta testers and then get the right product with far easier integration when they are ready and have demonstrated their advantages.