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 coping with challenging business landscapes, my priority is to identify and assess both legal and commercial risks, and subsequently, draft and develop a tailored and inclusive, crisis management strategy to mitigate them. This strategy should adopt a proactive, holistic, and informed character, and must be enacted and deployed with determination, rationality, and diligence. To this end, effective communication must be prioritised, with emphasis on cooperation, ensuring that all stakeholders are duly informed, involved, and aligned on the embracement, assimilation and execution of such strategy; thus, they become the co-authors, ultimate owners, and the operational officers of such strategy. Furthermore, the legal department must provide comprehensive guidance to key personnel and remain flexible and adaptable to revise the strategy terms to respond to unstable, dynamic conditions with confidence and decisiveness.  

It is imperative that the legal department organises and executes a comprehensive crisis response plan, encompassing risk assessment and the establishment of a crisis management team. This plan will serve as a functional and intelligible roadmap for responding to imminent risks, while preserving compliance and organisational resilience. Preferably, the legal team should have already conceived in principle and drafted on merits the framework of such a plan before the black swan theory is actually confirmed. In addition, the legal department must identify and prioritise critical contracts, assess diverse contractual and commercial risks in the event of a material breach, develop contingency plans, initiate negotiations with counterparties, and proceed to contract termination to the extent dictated by economic analysis of law.  

My primary objective is to create a hybrid (dual) legal strategy, that addresses both legal and commercial considerations, enabling us to successfully navigate the wide spectrum of respective issues in alignment with the company’s overarching goals. In this regard, said strategy not only focuses on mitigating weaknesses and threats but also on reinforcing existing strengths and exploring new opportunities, serving therefore, as a legal SWOT analysis, that aims to support and leverage business stability, resilience and growth. I firmly believe that the legal department must vigorously integrate with the organisation’s modus operandi and paramount strategy, adhering to core corporate norms, strengthening ethical values, notably integrity, and providing top notch legal guidance to leadership, as a valued and integral partner. 

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?  

I believe that artificial intelligence and machine learning, including document analysis, natural language process, and predictive analysis, will have a profound impact on the legal profession, given that these tools will significantly automate routine tasks such as document draft and review, contract analysis, and legal research, supported by data analytics, litigation analytics, and risk assessment applications. Under these terms, lawyers will be in a position to focus on more productive assignments and provide accurate and informed legal services, leading to economically efficient resolutions and structured strategic schemes.  

Said technological tools will further enable lawyers to draft, analyze and review large volumes of documents, including contracts, emails, and evidence, to identify trends and insights, and assess risks, which otherwise would not be traced, to shape, fine-tune and well-position their legal basis and diversify their strategy, and to foresee the outcomes of cases entrusted to them, based on historical data without anticipating judicial verdicts or being engaged in litigation. To stay ahead of said developments, I stay informed by enrolling in courses and attending seminars/conferences, and I actively engage with the applications pertaining to contract analysis.