Team size: Three

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

Our team has been involved in continuing to build an agile and innovative legal and compliance function for a rapidly growing technology company; the company provides a market-leading integrated risk management solution for customers worldwide. This has involved, among other things, optimising and streamlining legal caseload management, responding to ever-changing regulatory requirements (especially in the area of data privacy) and integrating three businesses acquired within the last year. In addition, our team has worked to build and support a new channel function within our sales organisation.

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

Legal teams will need to be much nimbler in responding to external factors (both legal and business), and also be much more “embedded” in each of the functional units in the business. A corporate legal team will need to think of itself increasingly as trusted business advisors that can “translate” external legal and regulatory risks into terms that make sense within the business’s strategic goals.

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

Get to know them! Ask to be included (at least as optional) in their regular team meetings. Schedule lunch with them and ask them what keeps them up at night and what their biggest challenges are. I am a firm believer that success, however you define it, begins with the quality of your relationships.

What are some of the main legislative or regulatory changes that have impacted you?

From our perspective, the most significant changes have been around data privacy. As a global technology provider, Riskonnect has been directly impacted by the rapidly evolving requirements around cross-border data transfers and have had to respond to these requirements across our business.