Could you share with us the story of your path to becoming an in-house counsel? What motivated you to choose this career path?

After graduating from law school, I started my career at various boutique law offices. I believe that working in boutique offices in the early years of one’s profession is very important as you can fully experience the dynamics of the legal profession in practice and provide legal services to clients within different sectors to improve your knowledge and understanding.

My role as an in-house counsel began when I started working for a global company. Working as a legal counsel in a global company enabled me to gain further knowledge about the varying sectors and dynamics of that company. Being fully involved in international compliance activities, adapting to change and the speed at which you work with the varying business units and different departments has enabled me to gain a true understanding of all commercial activities.

I can say that the most motivating aspects of working as an in-house counsel are the opportunities to broaden my knowledge, understand varying commercial legal areas and manage company expectations as a lawyer.

 In your role as an in-house counsel, what are the main responsibilities and tasks you handle on a day-to-day basis?

As an in-house counsel, my duties and responsibilities include carrying out the company’s legislative compliance work in the legal areas that fall within the business’s field of activity in which I am primarily involved; fulfilling the requests from administrative institutions; working in coordination with external consultants to carry out legal processes; preparing training programs to raise awareness to company employees; working in coordination with all commercial business units; and providing consultancy services in the required legal areas.

What are some of the key challenges you have faced as a rising star in-house counsel, and how have you overcome them?  

I believe that working with many different business units within the company is very valuable for an in-house counsel to gain and understand the varying perspectives within the commercial and managerial areas. Our role as an in-house counsel in this context is to find alternative ways to legally implement commercial requirements and facilitate playing a key role in these processes. In other words, although it is not always easy to speak to a businessperson in the language of law, it is important to develop a common language and common ground so that the processes can run smoothly.

Working in a sector such as e-commerce – which has experienced very significant growth for our company and as a commercial legal sector both locally and globally – requires regular follow-ups of legal regulations and developments where you need to quickly and successfully adapt to the developments that occur.

Hence, it requires you to continue to keep your legal and sectoral knowledge fully up to date, work hard with pure diligence and provide systematic guidance to all business units in a fast, accurate, and systematic manner that aims to minimise all risks in the best interests of the company. I can state that having other in-house colleagues with whom you work in harmony and as a unified team, alongside the right expert external advisors is vital for success as an in-house lawyer.