Can you tell us about your journey to becoming an in-house counsel? What inspired you to pursue a career in this field?

After my legal clerkship, I worked for 6 and a half years for Taylor Wessing, one of the largest law firms in Germany, in the legal service group environmental, planning & regulatory. At Taylor Wessing, I received very good practical training and developed an understanding of solution-orientated work. Besides, in the field of environmental law I already worked a lot with technical professions (environmental officers, emission control officers, experts for noise and vibrations, etc.) in an interdisciplinary way.

During this time as a lawyer, however, I realised that my strengths lay not in the area of acquisition, but in teamwork – especially in an interdisciplinary environment. It was essentially this realisation that induced me to change from the law firm to a company.

I joined Stadtwerke Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main mbH (VGF) as a legal counsel and was responsible for what is currently one of the largest infrastructure project of VGF and the City of Frankfurt am Main, the construction of the urban railway line “Europaviertel” in Frankfurt.

At VGF, I supported the establishment of SBEV as a project company and changed from VGF to SBEV after approximately a year.

Working at SBEV allows me to use my strengths for the realisation of railway projects, namely teamwork in an interdisciplinary team with engineers, our purchasing department and project communication.

In your role as an in-house counsel, what are the main responsibilities and tasks you handle on a day-to-day basis?

As the only in-house lawyer in a team of only 10 employees and two managing directors, my tasks go far beyond simply providing legal advice. I have an interface and coordination function both with our specialised external lawyers and with the legal departments of SBEV’s two shareholders – VGF and the City of Frankfurt am Main.

In this respect, I am responsible especially for the Group-internal contractual relationships and for the resolutions of the municipal bodies necessary for the realisation of the infrastructure projects.

In addition to the corporate law requirements and the legal support of the management of SBEV, my tasks also include all project-related legal issues. My focus here is on environmental and public law issues such as approval procedures, compliance with emission guide values and groundwater law requirements during construction, but also on land acquisition and securing the urban railway facilities in the land register.

What are some of the key challenges you have faced as a rising star in-house counsel, and how have you overcome them?

One of the biggest challenges was certainly to found SBEV as a project company and to establish it as a “speedboat” for efficient project realisation between the two “tankers”, the City of Frankfurt and VGF. SBEV has since been commissioned with two further urban railway projects. Therefore, we are realising three major infrastructure projects with a total project volume of almost 1 billion euros in lean structures with a highly specialised and very motivated team.

The other major challenge was to ensure the availability of building permission for the railway project Europaviertel. The planning approval decision as a “building permit” only grants a so-called “potential compulsory purchase”. This means that attempts must be made to conclude contractual agreements for the acquisition of land with all owners affected by the railway line. Only if an agreement is not reached the building permission must be obtained by means of official expropriation proceedings.

What steps have you taken to enhance your professional development and expand your legal skill set?

The project business and working in such a small unit as SBEV require me to constantly deal with new legal issues. I am also in constant legal dialogue with my colleagues from the compliance and legal departments at VGF. At Taylor Wessing, I already qualified as a specialist lawyer in administrative law and regularly attend further training courses.