The Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters of global imaging technologies and services business Canon covers operations in over 100 countries across the region. Led from the UK by senior vice president for legal, intellectual property and sustainability, David Bateson, a team of 30 lawyers located in a number of regional offices supports a broad range of markets. Over the last year, it has been instrumental in helping the organisation expand further by setting up new operations in Qatar and South Africa. The team covers a similarly broad range of product lines, ranging from outsourcing and consulting services business Océ to a medical systems division, acquired from Toshiba in 2016. These businesses, which involve the collection of large amounts of personal data, mean preparing for the new GDPR regime has taken on an added importance. Leading the business through this work is Rob Green, formerly legal director for emerging markets. As of this year, Green has taken on a new role as legal director and data privacy director. Jennifer Rickard, who recently retired from her position as head of property litigation at Nabarro, says Green is a standout figure within the Canon Europe team who ‘displays that good balance between understanding the nuances of the issues and not micro-managing his team. He has the necessary detachment and a good understanding of business to help drive projects forward’. Although run as a direct subsidiary, Canon Europe has a considerable degree of freedom in setting its own policies and processes. As a result, legal has been able to develop and introduce a new engagement model across the company. ‘The foundation of this model is using technology to allow the routine parts of our work to be completed by end users,’ comments Green. ‘We wanted to go beyond a passive self-service model that relies on a template located in the Cloud, but the cost of the technology on the market seemed prohibitive.’ Green’s response was to create his own self-service portal, drawing on the team’s experiences to create a list of Q&A material that would allow a wide range of users to locate information quickly. The team has also developed its own company-wide training programme to help lawyers work more closely with various business units. Modules cover a variety of non-legal topics, from learning to identify opportunities to thinking about things from a client’s perspective. The programme also asks lawyers to take control of a virtual business over a two-day period so they can better see how different aspects of a company’s operations are interrelated. ‘The whole programme is designed to get support functions thinking about the commercial units they are supporting,’ comments Green. The programme has since been taken on by the business and extended across other support functions, from HR to finance. Green, who trained in-house, says the programme has been particularly useful to those moving across from private practice. ‘There are a lot of things you don’t know when you move in-house. Often, when someone is deemed to be failing in a role, it is because they are not aware of the tacit expectations about what that role entails.’