Team size: 16

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

Due to organic growth and two major acquisitions, Baloise’s balance sheet total has increased by more than 50% (to €13.2bn since I started at Baloise in mid 2018. The total amount of employees increased from 1.124 to 1.555 and the legal department even tripled from five to 16 team members during the last two years. The selection and integration of all those new team members, and the upscaling of the structure, operations and processes of the legal team, was certainly a great challenge.

Do you have an example of a time when you have come up with an innovation that im-proved how your legal team works that did not result in a large expense?

At present, we are developing tailor made legal technology and operations solutions; this in a step-by-step approach. These solutions can be easily integrated as add-ons to our existing IT landscape. By doing so, we are improving our internal way of working and this in a budget friendly way and without heavily impacting the scarce IT resources.

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

The basic requirement and starting point of every in-house lawyer is having an excellent theoretical legal knowledge, combined with a profound understanding of its company’s culture, organisation and business activities.

Superb in-house lawyers can complement these features with the ability to (i) remain rational and discreet at all times, (ii) work in a pragmatic and solution-oriented way, and (iii) explain their proposed solution in short, business-friendly and understandable language.