About

Ekin Sungur is the head of legal at BNP Paribas Cardif Turkey. She started her legal career at Moroglu Arseven Ozdemir where she worked for two years before moving over to Gide Loyrette Nouel, the French law firm. Sungur’s in-house career started at Akkok Sanayi Yatirim ve Gelistirme, where she worked for a little more than a year and in February of 2012 she joined BNP Paribas Cardif. ‘When I decided to work as in-house lawyer, my main objective was to discover the other side of the legal world. I wanted to centralise my legal experience to one client and also evaluate whether the service provided by external law firms was effective and understand what the real needs of the commercial entities were’. Sungur established the centralised legal department for Cardif Turkey based on the principles of continuity within the departments and of understanding between the legal team and the business. ‘I think being specialised in one area is distinguishing, however having a general knowledge of all aspects of the company is also very important as you face all kind of legal matters’ she adds. To that end she organised regular meetings with all departments to get a better understanding of their daily workload and legal needs surrounding them. In 2014 the legal department was elected as the most successful in the company through an internal survey, a testament to the hard work and dedication of Sungur. ‘The consultant presenting us the results stated that such a result is exceptional for a legal department, because usually, legal departments are not the favourites of the employees. I think this is the general problem of the legal business, whether you practice it as an external consultant or in-house lawyer’ she concludes.