Team size: Five

Key team members: Jørgen Bylov Andersen (legal director), Maria Søgaard-Linnet, (senior legal counsel & DPM), Bo Morville Schrøder (commercial legal counsel), Martin Faber (legal counsel), Patrick Hansen (legal counsel)

Major legal advisers: Gorrissen Federspiel & Punct Adokater

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

Legal is an integrated part of the entire bid to operations process in ISS. Consequently, legal has been involved in the renewal of existing contracts and new contracts with customers and suppliers worth more than kr1.5bn in 2022. Furthermore, legal has been key in the handling of numerous large issues, including the Covid-19 aftermath, mitigation of the effects of historical high inflation rates and price increases, the successful management of a dispute with a major public customer subject to a contract worth more than a billion dkk as well as a number of minor disputes. Finally, legal has been instrumental in the improvement of our internal processes in general but especially concerning GDPR related issues.

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

Each part of the business should have a legal business partner, who acts as the single point of contact and takes care of all legal matters on behalf the business; either by handling the matter or ensuring that it is handled by the right subject matter expert.

A legal business partner must be considered and act as a full member of the business he or she is advising, for example, the legal business partners must be part of the management organisation in the business units they advise. This will secure them a seat at the table and allow them to be proactively engaged as early as possible. However, we also have to earn our seat at the table by being curious, commercially minded and able to offer solutions that balance legal and commercial considerations. We can offer a different perspective, but we also need to be able to offer different solutions. When we do this right, the business will experience less disputes, spend less time on issues that can be prevented and receive much more tailored advice that will improve their business offerings.

The unusual business environment created by the pandemic has been swiftly followed by the Ukraine crisis, and attendant supply chain costs rising and rising inflation. Are you now putting more emphasis on preparing for the unforeseen and, if so, what does this entail?

We have in the past couple of years experienced a massive malware attack, a pandemic, major contractual issues, and high inflation and price increases. Consequently, the entire business has shifted its way of thinking. We are now much more agile in our approach when such issues emerge and legal is involved from the very beginning. This has also put much more emphasis on the importance of our business continuity planning that attempts to also deal with the unforeseen – all of which has a legal angle to it – and we assess both the immediate actions needed and the long-term effects.