Team size: 18

Key team members: Carolyn Chua, Head of legal (Greater Asia and Greater China); Tania Juric, (ANZ and Southeast Asia); Hiromi Shiraishi (Japan); DaeJin Sah(South Korea); Joanna Zhang (Greater China)

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

As the Commercial legal team, we substantially provide business risk assessment and business ‘peace of mind’ to the business leaders and teams we support in Southeast Asia, across other Greater Asia countries and Greater China. With openings of many industries across the market economies, we continue to focus on public sector clients, telcos, financials and banking, and commercial and professional services types of industries. Many of the commercial deals we manage are large, hovering around double digits of millions in USD; some are country or subregion and global deals in nature.

We have seen a few (newer)key risks demanded of HP by its customers in commercial transactions. This has surfaced in more stringent commitments in cybersecurity and personal data, primarily as the business world is transacted in the physical and the online marketplace.

HP products have a fair share of influencer coverage; online marketing activities are critical in promoting our products, and some form of reliance on social influencers is vital. We have guided business teams on risks associated with sustainability and influencer style in HP’s marketing activities in the online marketplace. These activities are certainly not without its own set of risks. This is where the business requires vital guidance to ensure they can do business with this peace of mind.

As HP is one of the key market players with a strong network of HP partners, the anti-trust regimes across Greater Asia and Greater China play a significant role in HP’s business. Given the partner programs we drive in HP, this team must remain dynamic and progressive, keeping in touch with anti-trust regimes that significantly impact HP’s business across Greater Asia and Greater China.

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos?

Our ethos is being a solutions-oriented partner and delivering on our commitments to our clients to foster close work ties and offer the business peace of mind by taking the right and smart risks. We protect HP by managing legal and reputational risk. By keeping a strong relationship with external counsel for updates and progress in the external environment, we can continue giving adaptable and agile advice to HP’s business.

We empower teams and simplify how we work to foster greater agility and efficiency. Every team member is empowered to make the right decision with the business, take the necessary smart risk to ensure business continuity, and, more importantly, work in a safe zone in everything they do for HP.

We drive a culture of trust, diversity, inclusion, integrity, professional development and FUN: We admire and are proud of the diversity and inclusion culture in Greater Asia and Greater China legal team. We do many cross-border projects with colleagues we have not worked with before; we promote everyone taking time off and time out at work, and inclusion is key; no one is left behind in everything we do together. And we have lots of FUN doing the work we do in the team.

How does the in-house legal team contribute to the overall dispute resolution strategy of the organisation? 

First and foremost, the in-house legal team must ensure its understanding of the business, its clients’ requirements and the risk appetite. Equally important is understanding the business the company is in, the different key stakeholders who are the decision makers and that other business clients and business leaders have different risk appetites. Establish mutual trust from the start and set out roles for stakeholders, who obtains what data and how best to avoid data overload to the in-house team.

Know when the matter should be raised for external counsel support. And always have a readily available list of external counsel. The last thing we want to be doing is to start searching each time we decide to refer matters externally. Efficiency is key.

The in-house team should be able to articulate the issues back and forth between external counsel and internally within the company.

To be consistent and frequent in sharing communication, discussions, and updates of risks to its internal clients. The in-house legal team should never make the final decision on its own accord, nor should it be the party to decide on the final monetary solution. Many disputes may be legal, but many, if not all, disputes are also monetary risks to a company. How the risks should be considered should always be surfaced for the business as it is their risk appetite, not that of an in-house legal team. This is critical and should be made clear internally by the leader.