Team size: 20

What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have recently been involved in?

Our team provides end-to-end legal guidance and support to all business units of J.M. Huber Corporation in all their locations around the world. J.M. Huber Corporation is a 139-year-old family-owned company, which operates as a portfolio management company including CP Kelco, Huber Engineered Materials, and Huber Engineered Woods. Each of these businesses operate in different industries in rapidly growing markets such as specialty chemicals and minerals, agricultural nutrients, and adjuvants, building materials, hydrocolloids, and engineered woods. The legal team focuses on facilitating informed business decisions on a day-to-day basis and providing the required legal support for the business to attain its goals. In 2022, the team was particularly involved in supporting the growth of the businesses, either by external acquisitions or by investments in our plants by way of significant capital expenditures projects which implicate a variety of legal issues. Early August 2022, we signed an important deal to acquire Biolchim, a leading producer and distributor of a full range of specialty plant nutrition and biostimulants with a main operating base in Italy. One area of focus has been innovation and IP; the team works closely with our innovation and business development colleagues on the pipeline of new product launches and negotiating partnerships with other companies engaged in co-developing new products and solutions with us. We have secured promising partnerships paving the way for innovative solutions to be made available to our customers. In the current geopolitical and economic environment, the team supported the procurement and customer facing teams to handle spiking inflation and logistic challenges around the world and offered guidance on how to navigate the commercial restrictions put into place.

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

To be effective, the corporate legal team will have to stay even more connected with the rapid evolution of the world economic and geopolitical situation. The list is long on all the events that will play a major impact on the businesses is long: climate change, political unrest, wars, feeding the world population, cost of energy, access to health, and racial tensions. The legal teams will have to be agile and curious to learn new areas of law, and to adapt to the needs of the company. More than ever, the legal team will have to use its good judgement when facing new questions where there may be no in-house expertise. It will be key to build a strong network of outside counsel or consultants on which the legal team can utilise as needed and on short notice. Managing internal cost of the legal department will be under more scrutiny in an economic recession. Finally, the legal team will also have to be diverse and international to be able to bounce off ideas with trusted colleagues with different perspectives, expertise and backgrounds.