Group general counsel, head of legal and compliance Germany and International | Kaufland
Mirko Tegeler
Group general counsel, head of legal and compliance Germany and International | Kaufland
If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or general counsel, what would it be and why?
At the beginning of your professional career, it is all a matter of: ‘where do you start?’
The conventional way is to start in private practice and then move in-house. I basically started directly in-house. Maybe this is the stonier path, but I think that when you have a clear objective in mind and know what you want to do, you just need to pursue it, and you will be successful.
The main difference between a lawyer in a law firm and an in-house lawyer is that the latter not only provides legal advice but has the role of a manager. Aspiring in-house counsel should always keep in mind: ‘what are we aiming for with our business?’; ‘How do we make our money?’. You will only be successful as an in-house lawyer if you take this by heart and acknowledge that you are also responsible for the business’s success and not only for providing legal advice.
Mirko Tegeler is the group general counsel, head of legal and compliance for Germany and International at Kaufland. He is an acclaimed lawyer with an extensive career as an in-house counsel. Not only is Mirko highly knowledgeable when it comes to legal matters, but his business acumen has made him pivotal when it comes to driving the growth of corporations and transforming internal structures and departments.
Mirko started his legal studies in 1997 at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Given his passion for economics, he decided to undertake a dual degree incorporating business and economics. Early in his career, Mirko understood that he wanted to be something other than a regular solicitor. He was fascinated by companies and the world around them. Mirko’s education was enriched thanks to experiences abroad in Vienna, Austria and Auckland, New Zealand.
After obtaining the title of LLM in 2009, Mirko secured a corporate legal role at Lidl International, which is part of the Schwarz Group. The legal department was at the time newly founded and only counted three employees. Mirko saw in that the opportunity to expand his knowledge and influence. It represented both a challenge and an occasion working for a company with significant revenue and hundreds of different companies in such a small legal department. Certainly, Mirko was on top of the game. He likes to point out how these first years have given him crucial skills such as dealing with executives and genuinely understanding the structure of a company. After two years, Mirko’s tasks changed to commercial law, and he evolved his new field of practice into a regular legal department within Legal & Compliance. With its department, Mirko provided legal advice on a broad spectrum of topics, such as e-commerce, food law, IT law, M&A, public law, real estate law, and waste legislation. Throughout his ten years at Lidl, Mirko was pivotal in driving the growth of Legal and Compliance and turning it into a crucial internal partner for the business departments.
In 2019 Mirko moved on to Kaufland, also part of the Schwarz Group. Besides the general counsel role for Germany and internationally, he is chief of legal and compliance. The main legal fields of practice in the Legal and Compliance department are compliance, contract law, data protection, IP and real estate law, and regulatory affairs.