What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

It’s encouraging to be able to answer this without immediately referring to pandemic management!

Price inflation and hiring obviously continue to challenge across markets. However, the key challenge that springs to mind from the past year has been managing business consistently across different countries in my patch of SE Asia and Australasia. Our business is global and focused on large MNC customers, so a constant for us is finding ways to absorb and manage a wide variety of local jurisdiction requirements while still delivering solutions for our customers across multiple countries.

My impression is that there is a trend for countries to be more willing to take different regulatory stances. This in turn may make our professional lives more interesting and challenging in the future. I should emphasise this is more a gut feeling than anything data-derived – it may just be my impression because I am focused on the differences!

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

I continue to think a key change will be how legal teams shift from relying on their personal experience to using data for insight. You can see legal teams already doing this with data related to their own functions, but for me the interesting changes will flow from what legal increasingly does with the business’ own data. This is a behavioural change as much as it is a technological one and it will obviously change the role of the typical commercial lawyer. Another change that strikes me as significant is the move towards automated contract review and execution. This will, I think, make contract advisors more important, especially where a business can no longer assume a contract will be ‘kept in the drawer’.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

To be successful, it’s a must to have a good range of ‘crossbar’ skills from the T-shaped lawyer model (or any model that emphasises soft skills as well as professional expertise). The ability to communicate well, empathise, understand issues from multiple points of view and creatively problem solve are all important skills on top of niche expertise.

It’s critical to understand the business that you work for. If not, you run the risk of working on the wrong things and missing the issues that matter most. You should understand how money moves in the business you support. Make friends with your chief financial officer and learn what keeps them up at night.

Having working knowledge of legal work solutions including data analysis, legal tech and alternate resourcing are also valuable.

All that said, I wouldn’t gloss over the importance of traditional legal skills and expertise for in-house lawyers. Good in-house lawyers mark themselves out by remaining curious, keeping across legal developments and showing they can dial it up or down depending on the complexity and strategic importance of an issue.