Key team members:

Juliana Marcondes, Lead Senior Legal Counsel, SAP Portugal

Sara Carpinteiro, Senior Legal Counsel, SAP MENA

Olga Popkova, Senior Legal Counsel, Cloud Solution Counseling, SAP Global Legal

Rafael Dias Almeida, Senior Legal Counsel, Field Legal Office, SAP Global Legal

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

Juliana Marcondes, Lead Senior Legal Counsel, SAP Portugal: As the Lead Senior Legal counsel and primary advisor for Portuguese market operations, I provide essential guidance on high-stakes contract negotiations for cloud solutions, enterprise software licenses, and strategic consulting agreements. My legal oversight protects company interests while enabling revenue growth through carefully structured transactions with key customers and partners. Beyond my core transactional responsibilities, I represent SAP EMEA Field Legal in several working groups where I contribute strategic input on antitrust policy implementation, contract localisation initiatives, data protection matters, and the integration of new regulatory requirements.

Sara Carpinteiro, Senior Legal Counsel, SAP MENA: As Senior Legal Counsel supporting SAP’s operations across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other MENA markets, as well as UK & Ireland, I lead legal support for transactions in sectors such as Oil and Gas, Entertainment, and PIF, as well as Corporate segment across diverse industries. Over the past years, I have advised on several complex contract negotiations with major entities in KSA, UAE, Qatar, Israel and Portugal. In addition, I lead the ongoing monitoring and legal analysis of regulatory developments in KSA, with a particular focus on the evolution of the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and its regulations.

Olga Popkova, Senior Legal Counsel, Cloud Solution Counseling, SAP Global Legal: I am providing legal advice to the product development and engineering teams on the legal and regulatory topics. I am serving as the primary legal advisor and business partner to one or more SAP Cloud Solution Areas. I provide legal support in the areas of cloud product development, commercialisation, and regulatory compliance (including new business models and AI). My job includes evaluation of new cloud product features and functionality, as well as new solution offerings, including MVP and beta releases. I also conduct data usage and data protection and privacy analyses, data centres matters. I advise on product sunsets and features retirement.

Rafael Dias Almeida, Senior Legal Counsel, Field Legal Office, SAP Global Legal: My work consists of delivering strategic legal counsel on data governance and AI regulation, supporting SAP’s field-legal team across all global markets. We collaborate closely with field lawyers to shape AI and privacy strategies, while also enhancing internal enablement, creating smart contracting resources, improving governance and security processes, and providing negotiation tools and AI guidance. As part of an internal project, I also help drive future-proofing initiatives, developing GenAI applications for legal workflows, and upskilling colleagues in prompt engineering, and enabling our department to lead the emergence of the hybrid AI-lawyer.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

Juliana Marcondes: SAP Legal is currently implementing key changes to the contract structure to streamline negotiations. As a commercial lawyer closely involved in customer negotiations, I believe the legal team should work hand-in-hand with the sales team, supporting the entire contract lifecycle from the early stages of negotiation. This includes advising on the company’s contractual framework and standard terms and conditions. Strong soft skills such as focus, assertiveness, and empathy are also essential for building effective relationships with both the sales team and customers.

What are some of the biggest legal or regulatory challenges currently facing your industry, and how is your team preparing to address them?

Olga Popkova: Global AI regulations like the EU AI Act have created a complex compliance landscape. Considering that we still have data involved, existing and forthcoming privacy regulations must be considered as well. SAP Legal is actively tracking these regulations and embedding AI governance into legal workflows. This includes bias audits, transparency obligations, and risk classification for AI systems. Our team is involved in reviewing AI developments. These reviews are made in collaboration with different regional and local legal teams, as well as with the other experts, like data protection, security and product. AI also poses tension on the commercial and contractual side. SAP Legal teams are navigating between fostering innovation, but staying compliant, especially in cloud commercialization, open tech, and sustainability-linked offerings.In addition, data localization laws continue to evolve, which is a call for action for legal teams like SAP. We are constantly assessing the requirements applicable to our company and to our customers and transfer this knowledge into product standards and contractual terms.

Sara Carpinteiro: One of the most pressing legal and regulatory challenges that global Software providers face is the evolving data protection landscape. Specifically in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the implementation of the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and its regulations. As part of SAP’s legal team, I lead the monitoring and legal analysis of these developments, assessing the impact of legislative changes on SAP’s contractual documentation and ensuring alignment with new compliance requirements. This includes working closely with the risk assessment team and local management to proactively identify legal risks and implement mitigation strategies. Our approach is both strategic and adaptive, enabling us to support business continuity while maintaining regulatory alignment in a rapidly shifting environment.

How do you approach talent development and knowledge sharing within your legal team? Are there any specific practices or programmes in place?

Rafael Dias Almeida: We believe that embracing the future of legal work means equipping our lawyers with the skills and mindset to work alongside AI, confidently, thoughtfully, and responsibly. Within our team, we have made it a priority to demystify generative AI and turn it into a practical asset. Through initiatives like Legal Labs (a legal hackathon), interactive prompt workshops, and peer-to-peer learning sessions, we are creating a safe, collaborative space where lawyers can experiment, ask questions, and build real fluency with AI tools. Our goal is not just to adopt new technology, it is to empower every legal colleague to understand how to use AI in a way that enhances judgment, safeguards compliance, and brings real strategic value.

In what ways does your legal team promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, both within the department and in your external legal partnerships?

Olga Popkova: Our team expands territorially from the east of Europe (Czech Republic) to far west of the USA (California), which brings different nationalities and perspectives in play. It is a valuable experience to hear a diversity of voices, varying from young talents to more experienced colleagues. Each team member has a chance to influence work and volunteer for leading a certain project.