Team size: 10

Major legal advisors: Aslı Karagözoğlu Çelik, Burcu Gürel Yeter, Hande Çoşkunses, Elif Kübra Dalga

First, can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently?

Novartis is one of the rare multinational companies in the Turkish pharmaceuticals industry engaged not only in the commercial marketing but also local manufacturing of pharmaceutical products. This exposes my team to a variety of unique work such as restructuring of our manufacturing facilities and the sales of Novartis Gebze site to Genveon Pharma, business development and licensing deals with local pharmaceutical companies for our selected products, strategic patent litigation and administrative legal actions, clinical research and trial projects among others.

Besides, with our goal of being the business partner of choice as a legal team within Novartis, we continuously support our business functions in their day-to-day operations with an innovative approach in parallel with the rapidly changing market conditions and legal landscape. We also design and run internal educational series for equipping colleagues from non-legal functions with a proficient level of legal reasoning and knowledge which they can implement in their work and personal lives.

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

The most critical recent change has undoubtedly been the Covid-19 pandemic which tremendously affected the way of work in all industries. Pharmaceuticals is one of the heavily effected industries as the pandemic significantly disrupted the ongoing operations in the field although the need to deliver life-saving pharmaceuticals to patients and to ensure continuity of clinic research and development has been more critical than ever. In these last two years, the response of the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (AIFD) was critically important to address the needs and issues of our industry in which I have been acting as the Chair of the Legal Committee.

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

Various developments including the Covid-19 pandemic have significantly accelerated digitalisation of business procedures with a direct effect on the role of in-house legal teams. The in-house legal teams are now in a position more than ever to continuously follow the digital enhancements and their legal implications, such as the new commercial operations based on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. There are various outstanding legal discussions and questions regarding these topics globally which may not be clarified by local legislators any time soon. This evolving landscape requires in-house lawyers in jurisdictions like Turkey to be very dynamic, curios and good at smart risk taking so that they can lead and elevate their companies instead of keeping them reserved.