Spotlight on: Legal Strategy in Uncertain Times 

The ultimate goal of the in-house legal function remains to support the business in implementing strategy and minimize risk by providing high quality legal advice. Collaborative and proactive relationship management with internal clients and stakeholders is essential to achieve this goal in a rapidly changing environment. To enable Legal acting in such agile and flexible way,  especially when budgets are tight and resources are limited, it is required to  prioritize and  regularly  question,  where bespoke advise is essential and where a “one-fits-all” approach, such as by fostering the use of contract templates, clause libraries and alike might be as a whole more effective. Last but not least, the legal department itself must also learn and live the collaborative and legal tech supported way of working – and that requires investment in the lawyers training beyond the mere legal expertise and constant challenge and promotion of their flexibility, also by changing the department organization away from rigidly defined teams towards more ad hoc/project-related and flexible  expert task forces.