Team size: Five

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Over the last three years our legal team implemented a legal operations program with different projects to make the legal function more efficient, resilient and fit for business growth. We used Design Thinking to think outside the box and to optimise our processes. In doing so, the recent trends in the legal industry have again reminded us of the complexity of decision-making. To give but one example, a “make or buy decision” should not be treated as a pure financial decision but should reflect further dimensions. When it comes to in-housing of legal resources, you need to consider the shortage of skilled professionals and ways how to attract and retain legal talents. New opportunities by ever-evolving legal tech gives you a different set of options to in-source, though. Other developments can be a plus for buying legal services, such as a solid legal spend management backed by alternative fee arrangements, with all panel firms or freelance lawyer provisions able to narrow the financial gap between ‘make’ and ‘buy’.

At a time when it comes as no surprise to request the application of an outside counsel diversity, equity and inclusion policy, such strategy can help to balance any mismatches in terms of diversity that may arise between in-house and external teams. This example clearly shows how a common “make or buy decision” is nowadays inevitably more complex as it involves many different approaches.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

It goes without saying that working in the legal function has become more flexible as remote work ended up being a matter of routine. This comes with the fact that remote leadership is part of the new normal for general counsels and it has always been for those working in an international function. However, if the pandemic would not have brought remote working to the legal function, the war for talents would have. I have seen in several companies, in the last years before the pandemic, that the legal department used to be the last stronghold of in-office working. Yet, remote working is a simple way to get more engagement on your job postings. Thus, some companies have started to recruit legal talents throughout Europe for fully remote jobs. There is no need to narrow the search to their locations, as this allows them to reach more potential applicants.