Team size: Three

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

I work in an industry that requires rapid growth. It is also necessary to be agile, collaborative, and innovative. Our corporate structure requires us to work in different time zones and keep up with their regulatory frameworks. As a company catering to customers in various locations, we must be cognizant of legal, budget, time, and team constraints, while pushing for rapid growth. This is particularly challenging.

My role involves learning, searchingsearching, and checking processes within different jurisdictions and legal areas. I am required to comprehensively outline legal issues and desired solutions to outside counsel, ensure they align with business needs, and implement the most applicable solution. I am also responsible for other operations, such as acquisition or expansion into new markets or day-to-day tasks, such as the onboarding of a new employee.

One of the challenges of continuous growth is cross-border compliance brought by the Russia-Ukraine war. Before the war, we planned an expansion strategy in Russia. Unfortunately, many Russian financial institutions were sanctioned, and money transfers became impossible. New sanctions were frequently imposed, and every action was scrutinised or delayed by our US banks. It became burdensome to continue activities, especially as risks increased significantly, and we shut down our subsidiary. Following this, we created alternative growth paths in the UK and US, relocated key employees and expanded our operations so our revenue streams continued growing.

Growth and gain are almost impossible without risk. However, the general counsel must have various back-up plans. While preventive measures are crucial, it is also important to be creative with corrective measures and determine when to pursue profitable operations and when to persuade business departments leave these operations in times of crisis.

In your opinion, what areas should in-house lawyers focus on over the next few years to prove value to their organisations in Türkiye?

In-house lawyers must thoroughly understand the services offered by the business. It is important to possess business acumen and understand how the operations carried out generate revenue. This ensures the in-house lawyer appreciates the importance of their role in the organisation and enables them to be recognised as a source of advice in decision-making processes. It also ensures proffered solutions align with business needs.

In-house lawyers need to be hands-on. It is necessary to pre-empt and be responsive to business and stakeholder needs. This involves establishing understandable and applicable procedures for the business to follow, and being approachable to avoid issues or problems from stagnating before they are finally attended to.

With these qualities, In-house lawyers will be able to contribute to business growth and streamline processes, participating in economic and leadership decisions and making their mark in their company.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Innovation should create value for your organisation. I established a culture of collaboration to ensure the technologies we utilised had a positive impact.

Our customers are attended to by sales managers. However, having a corresponding number of counsels in every jurisdiction to follow up on daily contract procedures is not feasible. Hence, we used a customer relationship management tool, alongside DocuSign and our finance team’s invoicing processes. Sales managers can find and fill templates applicable to the contract at hand and send it to the customer’s relevant signatory within the company. The finance team is notified when the contract is signed and when an invoice needs to be sent and the sales manager is updated when it is time for renewal.

We managed to rapidly onboard new customers regardless of time zone and present new customers to investors when needed. Team members were able to quickly review, amend and contribute to contracts, which could be reviewed by other stakeholders when needed, shortening the contract signing cycle.