Team size: Six

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The team were instrumental in helping the company navigate the new reality of working during the pandemic. We provided guidance on our internal challenges to the crisis management team, with more than 700 internal staff and 40,000 temporary workers employed in all sectors of industry. On top of that, the team quickly built a company information hub with FAQs covering related topics such as working remotely, salaries, unemployment benefits, vaccination, and furlough.

The team has helped our company deal with the new rules regarding work permits. This required thorough analysis of the regulatory changes, and the development of training materials for our recruitment consultants. Moreover, they have helped develop a roadmap for changes required to our IT systems and have been important in validating the tools we now use for this.

At the same time, we were dealing with an important divestment and with strategic investments, and an internal reorganisation through a partial demerger of our business in the life sciences sector.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

Our global business structure has been reorganised around three global business units. We will assist the group with reshaping its corporate structure and management levels, as well as with a partial rebranding of its Talent Solutions Business. We are also excited about the envisaged acquisition of AKKA, one of the world’s biggest tech and engineering companies.

I will be involved in the roll-out of our new integrity and compliance monitoring tool “Ethical”. The purpose of the tool is to monitor and to enhance compliance with all our internal policies.

What do you feel are the pros and cons of an in-house legal role compared to a private practice one?

Having a variety of clients in different industries, while working in private practice for a while, allowed me to gain a broad perspective on what kind of opportunities would be available to me. The biggest downside of private practice was the constant pressure of billable hours, timesheet recording, and admin work related to billing.

An in-house role offers its own unique set of challenges. Whilst the hours are not as unpredictable as they can be in a law firm, the days are busy as you are always with your client. The upside is that you are involved from an early stage and see the real impact of your legal work on the business. In-house legal teams require a commercially focused approach as you will be dealing directly with the business.