Team size: 10

Can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently (cases, transactions, projects)?

Novartis Pharma legal team provides high-quality and commercially focused in-house legal services to our business functions while managing legal risks and ensuring business continuity. Our daily work involves a wide range of legal and compliance matters in the areas of commercial matters, corporate governance, compliance with strict healthcare regulations, commercial and administrative litigation, data privacy, competition, and intellectual property law. The wide range of business operation of Novartis in Türkiye provided out team the opportunity to work in dynamic legal landscape.

Which recent political, economic, or regulatory changes have impacted the company and the team the most?

Pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated in Türkiye; and therefore, in-house legal teams always need to keep their eye on the change of the relevant regulation. The regulation on licensing pharmaceutical products has recently been amended and given that we are responsible for core legal and compliance support of the company’s business, our team navigated other departments to adapt to this regulatory change. The recent currency fluctuation and the rise of inflation have significantly impacted on the pharma industry. Given that the currency exchange rate for the imported pharmaceutical products is annually fixed by the regulatory authorities, these are subject to a reference pricing system in Türkiye.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

The current trend of remote working, shifting from face-to-face interactions to digital ones, is the most significant technological advancement impacting the role of in-house legal teams. To provide high-quality legal service with an innovative approach, in-house legal teams are required to catch up with the change of regulations in a wide range of law including data privacy, intellectual property, labour, and commercial law. In addition, in-house legal teams should transform their way of working to do better in the digitally advanced working environment. I encourage them to create more time for strategic work while new legal tech oversees mundane tasks.