Team size: Two

Key team members: Laura Juul Madsen, general counsel; and Mai Helbo Langsted, legal counsel

Can you give an idea of the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Clever is a charge point operator and an electricity company wishing to make the future brighter by building charging infrastructure and providing intelligent charging solutions, to name a few. Clever is one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe. Consequently, the commercial mindset of Clever has shifted from a startup to a scaleup mentality, and the legal team is responsible for providing legal and strategic advice in connection with this paradigm shift.

Being a charge point operator, Clever operates in a rapidly developing business field subject to major public and political scrutiny. Creating and launching new products and pursuing new business partners and customers (BTB and BTC) are part of our everyday business. Parts of our company are heavily regulated, adding further complexity to the responsibilities of the legal team.

On top of that, our business was severely disrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, causing electricity prices to skyrocket during the spring of 2022.

For the past year, we have navigated these circumstances and assisted the commercial teams in rapidly transitioning from a mainly flat fee-oriented business model to a new one while still expanding our services. A few highlights of this endeavour: Being part of the strategic decisions at the executive level as well as providing legal advice to all teams affected by the price increases leading to the termination of Clever’s entire BTC customer portfolio and subsequent onboarding of the portfolio into a new legal framework; negotiating a power purchase agreement under which Clever will purchase approximately 400GWh over the course of the coming decade; advising on the establishment of new business areas and products, including the purchase of 1.5 MWh mega batteries to stabilise the power grid in case of critical fluctuations; taking part in the strategic decisions and launch of a new maternity leave package completely rethinking and improving the conditions for maternity leave for all employees; ensuring compliance with regulatory quick-fixes to the energy crisis, including newly introduced legislation on freezing of customer invoices due to the record-high electricity prices while handling the legal backlash and unhappy customers due to significant price increases; and ensuring that our business teams comply with new legislation and practices relating to ESG and anti-greenwashing.

How do you suggest in-house departments build strong relationships with business partners?

The legal team must be responsive and inquisitive. You can only gain access to the knowledge and trust that enables you to do your job if you are truly curious about your company’s products. How you carry yourself at the workplace is an essential aspect of demonstrating both responsiveness and inquisitiveness. Suppose the legal team is barricaded behind formalistic behaviour and language and only interacts with its team members. In that case, building the necessary trust with the business partners is challenging.

If you had to give advice to an aspiring in-house lawyer or general counsel, what would it be and why?

Focus on the critical commercial elements of the business. Many lawyers tend to spread themselves too thin trying to cover every legal matter of the company, even the very trivial ones and the ones where the potential adverse consequences are limited from a commercial perspective. The path to becoming a trusted adviser to business partners is much easier if the legal team aligns with their priorities and aims at striking a sensible balance between strict compliance and commercial pragmatism.