Team size: Three

Key team members: Zenaida Hasanovic

Major legal advisers: Cerha Hempel, Schwarz Schönherr, Primelaw, Schönherr

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

A big part of our daily job is the review of contracts and marketing activities. Both are very time consuming and need coordination meetings with other stakeholders.

For contract management processes, we identified major contract types and created easy to access and use templates, which we shared with respective departments. When the respective department fills out the missing information marked in the contract template, the template is sent to us for review. We use our own contract management system, which oversees whole contract cycle; the first draft, comments, final approval, and the archiving of the signed contract once the electronic signatures have been obtained. Every year, each contract template is reviewed and updated, if necessary, before new templates are being send out.

For marketing initiatives, we set up a questionnaire utilised by our marketing colleagues in the initial stage of creating a marketing initiative. The questionnaire is quite simple; it contains ten questions, to be answered with either Yes or No. If a question needs to be answered with Yes, the marketing team is alerted that the initiative might contain a legal risk, and we are contacted in the very early stage of this marketing idea. In case, no answers contain a Yes-answer, the final marketing idea is shared with the legal department, including the questionnaire. Only after the legal team reviews and approves this final marketing idea from a legal perspective, can it be implemented.

Both projects saved time and boosted the efficiency of our work.

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?

We are responsible for both legal and compliance matters. We implement local compliance policies, review and update them regularly, offer training, send out newsletters and have also implemented a system for compliance requests to be made.

Furthermore, we are represented in various working groups, such as the Corona Task Force, which was established at the beginning of the pandemic. Renata is chairman of the sponsorship and donations committee, which decides on sponsorship or donations requests, including corporate social responsibility projects. Zenaida is vice president of a committee dedicated to ensuring that Samsung is a great place to work.

We have regular jour fixe with the HR department, in which cross-divisional topics – such as diversity, equality and inclusion – are discussed. In 2022, we were recognised as a “21st Century Legal Department”. Renata frequently joins penal discussions, in which she contributes to topics like challenges in the daily profession, perspectives, knowledge exchange, dealing with work in the 21st century and much more.

Can you sum up the team culture/ethos in one sentence? 

In our team we strive to reach the best results possible by hard work, dedication, appreciation and finally, fun!

Teamwork is the essence of our success. We have weekly jour fixe, in which we share updates on current projects, discuss legal questions and challenges to ensure that all team members can substitute if each other, if needed. We get are motivated to work hard because projects have been completed successfully due to our contributions. These successes are also celebrated accordingly. Recognition of excellent work is essential, and this recognition does not only come our own team, but also from other departments and top management.

Even in extremely busy times, we take the time to reflect on how we feel, what we can do to improve challenges we are facing or just share some funny moments together – you will always have a laugh with us.