About

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

We are currently living the fourth industrial revolution, which forces us to change our routine working principles and to find new value-added products and services. Over the past several years, new technologies have had a significant impact on the business. With the rise of the new needs, companies will focus on the new services/products in order to meet clients’ expectations. As the Adecco Group, we create our roadmap according to those needs. As lawyers, we are expected to understand and guide our internal stakeholders in order to help the team to overcome the legal boundaries and create 100% compliance both with the local regulations and company internal policies.

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

Value added services and managed services have been our main focusing areas in the last years. Creating the right legal setup for such cross-functional agreements, in regard to the local regulations and companies’ global policies has been a very challenging but also pleasing experience for us. Personally, I may say that I really enjoy being in fast-changing environments, which force me to develop my legal skills. For this reason, being part of such great projects is a great way to adopt myself to the new business models and expand my legal knowledge as well.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

The best part of being an in-house lawyer is having the opportunity to understand the business expectations with the inside information. Respectively, building strong relationships with business partners is the key element to create a strong team, by working cooperatively in order to overcome business challenges. In this regard, in-house lawyers must be acting as a member/co-worker of the business partners, who help them for their business targets by providing accurate support to resolve business problems, in relation to the local regulations and companies’ internal policies.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

In the next few years, it is the smart technologies and new digital products that will be changing our legal practices. In today’s world, digitisation is the key goal of every industry. Companies are competing in order to reduce costs with the help of these technologies, which will affect the expectations from the legal departments as well. In order to optimise high value services, legal departments will more focus on such additional resources, that will reduce workloads, promote innovation and efficiency and improve working habits. Using the right legal tech products will accelerate legal innovation movement, especially for cybersecurity and data privacy matters. In this regard, we believe that such products must be easy to implement in order to facilitate the transition period.

What do you feel are the most effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them?

We always see our external counsel as a part of our team, who help us to overcome unexpected legal problems. We rely on their expertise and always appreciate their support. We believe that transparency is the key element to have accurate instruction from the external counsel. For this reason, it is important to outline the business needs and the major points that we expect to take under consideration when requesting an advice for our business strategies. We believe that asking the right questions by giving the background of the business needs is the key element for having the right instructions for the legal problems that we are facing in order to reach our business targets.

FOCUS ON: The new environment

In-house counsel must adapt to the fast-changing environments and new business models in order to make their skill sets more competitive due to the emerging expectations of the industries. Respectively, as the world evolves, we must develop our skills and expand our way of thinking to effectively support business partners and find solutions for the new business models, inline with the local regulations. In order to do that, we must prepare ourselves for the next business models, by trying to identify possible legal risks and to provide accurate answers to overcome with them in respect to the business needs. Lobbying activities for the creation and/or improvement of the current legislation is another important point that is needed to be considered by in-house counsels. Having the right communication with the related official authorities to explain the business needs, will create a bridge between public and private sector players.

With the rise of the new technologies, we had a significant effect on the practice of law. We must have a sound understanding the business needs and also be comfortable with uncertainty, since the new business models are not defined/finalized yet. As an in-house counsel, who works in a global environment, I try to adopt myself to above mentioned situations with the help of our global legal team. We work as a “one team”, which helps us to understand legal expectations globally by sharing local experiences. In the next years, with the creation of new working models, we will be facing with more legal questions and technological innovations will be changing in-house working practices.