Legal team size: North America – 3 – 5

What are the projects that you are most proud of working on over the past 12 months?

This is a unique time for regulation: we have major areas of the law that are in the process of emerging and in-house departments are actively developing expertise and processes to service our business units and ensure that our companies comply with new areas of the law. At a high level, projects include: ESG, processes and communication to accommodate the fast-moving customs and tariff regulations, supply chain projects and the continued evolution of privacy regulations. These are just some of the recent projects we have been involved in, together with our compliance and business units.

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?

Despite the trend towards federal deregulation, ESG remains a very hot topic at the state level. I believe in many areas of the law we are seeing a paradigm shift, which requires in-house teams to be open to change on both a strategic and operational level. For example, the emergence of PROs to self-fund regulation of various industries is something we are watching very carefully.

What are the key things you prioritise to get the most out of your team?

In today’s environment I prioritize training, a strong business foundation and the ability to be a flexible thinker. The days of siloed legal teams waiting for business units to send them contracts are long gone and my team must understand the business and how the advice we are giving affects the larger ecosystem. They must be able to weigh the legal risk against the needs of the business and come up with pragmatic solutions to ensure that both objectives are achieved, preferably with a “win-win” mentality.