General counsel | Yemek Sepeti Elektronik İletişim Perakende Gıda Lojistik
Duygu Tanıt
General counsel | Yemek Sepeti Elektronik İletişim Perakende Gıda Lojistik
The structuring of the first dark store business, named Yemeksepeti Banabi, which combined e-commerce and retail sectors into a digital platform in February 2018 was an amazing transaction project. Over several years, Yemeksepeti covered a significant role in online food delivery sector with more than 14 million users and 25,000 restaurants. Recently, the company expanded its business to provide users grocery products in a couple of minutes. This was a revolution for the retail sector, which needs a complex legal system involving numerous contracts with suppliers, landlords, motorcycle couriers with legal documentations for administrative authorities such Social Security Institution, Chambers of Commerce, licensing support, and delivery of trainings on HR programmes and others.
The coup d’etat attempt in 2016 saw major political and economic turmoil for all sectors. Afterwards, a state of emergency was declared all around Turkey and the political regime has changed to a presidential regime from a parliamentary democracy, as well as [a changing] legal system and regulatory environment in 2017. As in-house legal counsel, we are experiencing a rapid change in ministries and supervisory authorities, which led the legal team from advisory role to true associates in companies internally. While legal functions are integrated public relations, we have a seat at the management teams of company in order to analyse incoming legislative changes and to find the most applicable solutions with young government institutions.
The primary task shall be to set the legal structure of Yemeksepeti Banabi, our young transaction, as clearly and as smoothly as possible, and in compliance with all relevant retail legislation. My personal intent regarding the development of this project can be summed by the following motto: “The simpler the question, the better result is”. When a company switches business models, issues seem more complex and extraordinary, you would be surprised for every insignificant obstacles. I believe a legal team provides a company clear foresight by managing governmental relations and monitoring upcoming legislative changes, and helps to determine the optimal solution for the company.
I believe that providing business friendly legal support and optimal business advice which is practical and effective is an important element for the growth of the company and a great advantage for the legal team in particular. An in-house legal team should be more functional in advising business and attentive to the needs of company. In order to treat matters in a business-like manner, it is significant to ensure your team understands company’s strategy and operations. Therefore, as a lawyer involved in management, I believe in a periodical orientation programme, which gives the team a general idea about the market’s direction and company goals. This includes the needs of sales, marketing, manufacturing, logistics and HR teams to increase business confidence and improving the quality of legal work. Second, while identifying major and critical areas of business, it needs to simplify and automatize its routine daily work. In this regard, I prioritise matters and separate sub-heading in overall physical meetings or effective one-on-one catch-ups with junior lawyers in the team. Also, there are some digital tools and online databases that we have easy access to, such as Lexpera, Jurix which includes not only academic and theoretical writings but also thousands of brief articles, legal magazines aimed at proactive and subtle approach and effective solution of legal issues. Also, we train both senior and junior lawyers regularly with the help of online learning platforms such as MyAcademy that helps young lawyers to consider the best and worst case scenario risks.
I would indicate two legal tech products in particular. For me, it’s essential to distribute workload among the team and produce a comprehensive body of work also. We use an email tracking tool which helps to split the requests, assign them to specific team member, sends email alerts. It contains pre-built alarms to remind you important requests and help you from where to start by collecting customised keywords from each email, reducing the amount of time we spend while cleaning our inbox.
The second product I find very helpful is an e-signature programme. This helps colleagues electronically sign documents and spend less time and money managing paperwork. Although we cannot use this tool before governmental institutions since there is no regulation yet in Turkey, it still saves time and works for the company internally.
The in-house counsel role has changed considerably in recent years. At first, companies were only trying to save money on external consultants; however, the awareness of having in-house counsel is increasing by keeping a “legal memory” in the company. We are not only in charge of leading litigation and transactional matters, but also monitoring public affairs, and must keep an eye on upcoming regulations. In my opinion, the role of a legal counsel is no longer limited to analysing legal risk and giving legal advice to the company. It also needs to cooperate with the business, understand its commercial side and involve decision-making process to lead the business model before any legal obstacle occurs. Therefore, I do see general counsel as part of [more] executive teams over the next few years, moreover a part of board of directors, in order to discuss company’s steps in advance, to cooperate with other executives and to minimise the risks associated with actions decided upon by board members.