First, can you please give us an idea of the sort of work your team has done recently?         

The legal team of Österreichische Post handles a wide range of legal areas (16+), starting from drafting and negotiating customer or supplier contracts, corporate houskeeping or solving regulatory and data protection issues up to completion of international M&A transactions or complex analysis and structuring of strategic cooperations. Recently, for example, we led a lengthy cartel litigation against a competitor, reached a settlement in cartel proceedings for damages, analysed the legal preconditions for a joint bid with a competitor in an international tender procedure to acquire a competitor outside of Austria or have designed and implemented a new rebate system for our customers.     

How does your legal strategy change during periods of instability or uncertainty?  

We deal with periods of instability or uncertainty basically in two ways. On the one hand, we regularly screen and assess our activities and contracts on potential new risks and amend — both our behavior as well as our contracts — accordingly. However, we foster close information exchange and cooperation with our colleagues from other departments to rapidly react to any market changes. During the covid-crisis for example, due to a boom of online shopping Österreichische Post had to deal with an enormous increase of parcels in a very short time while, at the same time, dealing with lack of personnel due to a high number of infections. However, because of close cooperation between the legal and operational teams of Österreichische Post we managed to find good solutions for all our customers and were able to fulfill our legal duties in due course.    

Do you make use of any ‘legal tech’ products, and if so, for which areas of your job do you find it most useful?  

Yes, the legal team of Österreichische Post also keeps pace with the rapid changes in the digital area and makes use of the advantages of some useful developments. For example, our legal team manages a software tool which allows our colleagues from other departments to individually draft simple contracts without the necessity to contact us (NDA). We programmed the software tool in such a way that our colleagues only answer a few simple questions and then receive a contract customised to their needs. Also, we are currently looking for possibilities to improve our case management system to enable an optimal knowledge exchange among our team members.