Team size: 12

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

Recently, and on a regular basis, our team has directly engaged and led numerous acquisitions of hotels and well-known hospitality and restaurant brands and expanded those brands globally through management and franchise agreements. Our legal team also took the lead in negotiating, establishing and supporting Minor’s joint venture with Country Garden in China—a transaction which is currently expanding Minor’s brands at an exponential rate in greater China.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Thailand over the next five to ten years?

One of Minor’s strengths is the fungibility of its legal team. Senior and medium level attorneys are efficient and fluent with their day-to-day legal tasks but are also amongst the team members most familiar with the ins and outs of the company’s business and culture. Minor’s legal members are regularly used to fill in gaps on corporate and commercial teams, to lead when necessary and to add experience, opinions and foresight on matters which go past mere legal analysis. This benefits our legal team by keeping our attorneys at the forefront of Minor’s operations and ever active expansion and benefits Minor by having a dedicated core of professionals ready to jump into any position with confidence and experience. Thai businesses wishing to evolve, develop and expand in the next five to ten years will need to start seeing and implementing their legal teams for all corporate matters, especially senior attorneys. Senior attorneys who are merely used for drafting contracts and paper pushing are underutilised or underperforming. Truly seasoned attorneys offer their companies a wealth of know-how, professional responsibility and practical thinking in matters outside the limited scope of legal work. Companies that are able to adapt, view and utilize their attorneys as counselors on all business matters will strengthen their executive team’s abilities and effectiveness. I predict that Thailand’s most successful companies in the next decade will retain and heavily utilize their senior counsels for matters which are far outside the scope of legal day to day work.

As we enter the next decade, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

The two elements which are crucial for a strong corporate legal team are muscle memory and flexibility. A team which has repeated experience of successfully drafting, negotiating and executing legal and corporate and commercial matters is crucial for the stability of the team and the company. Such muscle memory is built through retaining a core group of intelligent, ethical, dedicated, and cooperative lawyers over years (most of Minor’s legal team has been together for a decade). By retaining a quality and talented legal core, the individual attorneys develop their own skills while the team greatly benefits with each additional skill and honed talent of said lawyer. As a result, the day-to-day work of the company is carried out fluently and efficiently. Team and individual muscle memory also allows for flexibility, innovation and strategic improvisation—years of individual and team growth provides a basis of logic and confidence to support the company when facing new challenges and realities in the many industries we work within. Past experiences, both successes and failures, power the experienced team through the unknown — giving them the strength of teamwork, experience and innovative thought necessary to overcome new challenges.