Team size: Seven

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have been involved in over the past year?

I am housed by Scommerce – a holding company based in Vietnam. Scommerce holds nearly ten subsidiaries operating nationwide (63 provinces in Vietnam) with a focus on full stop shop last-mile logistics services, including express delivery under the renowned brand Giao Hang Nhanh (GHN, GHNExpress, GHNLogistics and Giao Hang Nang – the new business for bulky delivery) and Ahamove. My legal team is tasked with handling all legal, compliance, litigation, and government affairs of these subsidiaries mostly with in-house resources.

Over the past year, I have played a pivotal role in logistics facility investment and construction. I advised logistics stakeholders on warehouse, sort centre and hub reorganisation and expansion, including large-scale premises assessment, dealings with internal cross-functional stakeholders and external lessors to review or streamline lease contracts, strengthening robust risk measurement in critical logistics assets. One of our strategic logistics assets is an in-progress integrated warehousing-sortation center in the North of Vietnam with an acreage of 85,500m2, sorting scale of 278 million parcels per day, of which the legal team effective reviewed and negotiated the land lease agreement and a wide range of plant, design and build contractual documentation based on FIDIC, 2017 yellow book version.

Other significant achievements are that our team successfully supported financial stakeholders in more than $9m fund-raising for logistic facility and operational capability development.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Vietnam’s e-logistics sector remains in a growth phase, yet competition is intensifying, marked by the exit of several major players from both the express and instant delivery segments. Against this context, tighter regulatory oversight and increasingly complex demands from stakeholders and partners place the legal team at the very centre of the business’s resilience. Our team is often required to make swift, high-stakes decisions – balancing the company’s strategic interests with the rising expectations of regulators, partners, and customers. In moments of crisis, the legal team steps forward as a stabilising force, directly managing stakeholder concerns while safeguarding compliance and ensuring the organisation’s long-term sustainability.

What do you think is the greatest innovation you have enacted in the past year?

Over the past year, I have introduced several key innovations to improve the efficiency and amplification of legal team’s impacts on the business. Our team has developed a contract review process and a range of standardised contract forms with the readiness to serve diversified operations and business models serving SME, B2B and ecommerce customers. With the rapid rise of ecommerce in Vietnam and the increasing demand for e-logistics services from large multinational corporations and major platform operators, our team has had to develop and tailor highly complex commercial schemes in which the company’s interests against the often stringent requirements of regional players, while structuring nuanced compensation and remedy mechanisms to address the challenges of bulky delivery. Additionally, the team has compiled a comprehensive set of cross-function memos and guidelines addressing corporate governance, logistics business models, data protection and security.

In the area of government affairs, our legal team has played an increasingly pivotal role in navigating Vietnam’s evolving landscape shaped by the country’s comprehensive modernisation of legislation. While our logistics facilities and operations are spread nationwide, the centrally based legal team in Ho Chi Minh City has enhanced its tracking tools to better organise and streamline support for inspections and audits at the national level. With a strong and proactive mindset, the team engages effectively with ministerial and provincial regulators, ensuring robust compliance and risk management, particularly in express delivery operations and network security – key priorities against the backdrop of geopolitical shifts and state’s tightened management of e-logistic business. Additionally, I implemented a centralised legal document management system that organises and simplifies access to a large volume of corporate and operational documents. This innovation has drastically improved our response lead-times to both internal and external legal requests, allowing us to provide timely and effective support across the organisation.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Vietnam is undergoing profound political and regulatory shifts that are reshaping the legal and compliance landscape. With regulators intensifying oversight of ecommerce and e-logistics in areas such as tax compliance, personal data protection, and cybersecurity, the role of the legal team has never been more critical in cultivating a culture of compliance, advocating for regular reviews of operations and governance practices to ensure alignment with evolving regulatory expectations. At the same time, sweeping reforms in real estate and land legislation carry critical implications for logistics facility transactions. Our legal team guides businesses through these complexities, providing strategic insight and practical solutions to adapt effectively to Vietnam’s fast-changing legal framework.