How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

When it comes to instability or crisis, whether within an organisation, within a team or within a market, truth is that there is no tailored strategy to be used at all times. Focus must be dual: versus the organisation and versus one’s team. Agility, alignment with internal stakeholders on all levels, prioritisation, efficient resource allocation, risk/value assessment, choice between being proactive or reactive, speed, efficiency; all leaders must work together, test, review, fail fast if they must, learn and do it again – this time better.

It is crucial to not work in silo, to always align and regularly check in, when it comes to short- and long-term business goals and business priorities and to reconcile legal concerns with business concerns. At the same time, a leader must also manage expectations and manage feelings, because people are the heart of any organisation and the fuel of any operation.

Last, but certainly not least, key learnings and feedback from all stakeholders, during and after the crisis is of utmost importance; this will provide the knowledge, expertise and the tools to successfully handle incidents in the future.

In the organisation I work for, Global Legal team mission is to “enable and protect” the business, so my strategy is always a combination and a balanced approach of these two pillars.

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?

Artificial intelligence and automation are actively being integrated into legal processes; technology is not about replacing lawyers but about enhancing their capabilities.

In my organisation, we focus on tech with the support of a dedicated Global Legal Tech team, that is designing, generating, testing and implementing legal technology in order to streamline cross functional cooperation, legal work and research, approval and signature flow, and increase speed and efficiency. The same team updates, trains and supports all legal teams across the globe.

My legal team is heavily involved in global tech projects, we always follow developments and make sure we have the time and the curiosity to read and stay updated.

Using Microsoft applications, we developed a legal “front door” that allows business to submit requests to the legal team in a structured and consistent way, responsive forms to only show fields that are relevant to the request type, automated tracking, proper allocation and routing of each request to the relevant team and individual, approval flow checkpoints and reporting tools. We have also implemented numerous self-service tools so that business can generate standard legal documents (NDAs for instance) without legal team involvement.

Goes without saying that, billing and timekeeping software, communication and collaboration tools (especially remote collaboration possibilities) as well as legal databases have been and always will be instrumental tools for legal professionals.

Document Drafter for automation and contract generation, Chat GBP, Copilot, Generative AI tools, Chatbots are, in my opinion, the highlights that will shape legal profession in the near future, notwithstanding of course technology related to Cybersecurity and privacy given the increasing reliance on digital tools.