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

Our in-house legal team is structured to efficiently respond to the needs of the organisation, and currently handles regulatory, data privacy and corporate compliance, industrial or labour relations, contract drafting and review, among others.

Significant effort is devoted to aligning the expertise of each in-house legal team member with the right set of deliverables. This has been a challenging yet thrilling endeavour, as the Company belongs to the hotel gaming industry, which deals with voluminous transactions and activities daily.

During and after the height of the pandemic, several initiatives had to be established to protect the lives and livelihood of employees and maintain harmonious relations with all our stakeholders. This entailed a significant amount of legal work.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

With unyielding integrity as our foundation, our company and all its officers and employees are accountable to these principles: passion for people, the will to wow, and thriving in teamwork.

Choosing external lawyers with similar values is vital, as they are more likely to understand our priorities and how we manage and categorise the risks that we face in our daily operations. This enhances communication, collaboration, and trust between the in-house legal team and the external lawyers.

We will certainly reconsider what firms we work with based on their willingness and ability to render legal services that align with our values. Stakeholders, and even the general public, may perceive inconsistencies or contradictions in legal strategy or structuring of transactions as a symptom of internal conflicts, which will be antithetical to the intended outcome and may even lead to unintended consequences.

Why are in-house lawyers well-placed to drive change in their organisations?

Change is almost always intimidating and, to some, disheartening. It is usually faced with resistance and lack of support because transformation is often seen as disruptive, and the gaps between stakeholders commonly widen post-transition.

As part of the organisation, in-house lawyers possess a unique perspective that has its own advantages. They possess comprehensive knowledge of their organisation’s institutional history, business operations, strategies, and goals, enabling them to easily identify areas where their legal knowledge and skills may be applied to support operations and, where necessary and applicable, drive change.

Secondly, in-house lawyers enjoy close proximity to the organisation’s senior management, officers, and employees, and are afforded a high level of trust and confidence that gives them the opportunity to closely follow the operations of key stakeholders and positively influence decisions.

Lastly, in-house lawyers – especially those who have grown with their organisations, are not just legal experts. They are also businessmen who know their industry’s landscape as they also follow the trends and changes that affect the product or service offered by their organisation.

Effective in-house lawyers, alongside other key officers, could become the backbone of such change by providing proper guidance and legal advice relevant to the realities of the entire organisation.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

AI will impact the role of in-house legal teams and has potential when used wisely and responsibly, in increasing our team members’ productivity and promoting their work-life balance.

Aspects of legal work and simple tasks can be delegated to artificial intelligence, which when properly and conscientiously trained, can free in-house legal teams’ time to focus on more significant, strategic, and influential projects that will benefit the organisation and its stakeholders.

We are already seeing its effects in other fields, which is both exciting and daunting. Presently, we are observing the trends in artificial intelligence and waiting for the right time to implement it without adversely disrupting the in-house legal team’s dynamics and interfering with the quality of legal services that we render.