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How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners? To establish a good relationship with business partners, in-house lawyers need to do the following three tasks: First of all, you need to have a business mind-set. As an in-house lawyer, in addition to having a solid legal background, you must also have a business mind-set when reviewing legal documents or dealing with investment M&A projects. In addition to telling the business department how the law prescribes the issue, you are also supposed to help the business facilitate the transaction on the basis of legal compliance. Secondly, you must be familiar with the business. In-house lawyers must be familiar with their company’s entire business process, including the front-end, middle-end and back-end business. Also, put yourself into the business’s shoes. As mentioned earlier, in-house lawyers need to have the business mind-set, as well as put themselves into the business’ shoes, and consider why the company is making the deal. The value of in-house lawyers is to work with business departments to create revenue for the company, reduce losses, and make sure the company’s business development is compliant, rather than making stumbling blocks, only raising objections but not providing solutions. Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

A good in-house lawyer must be familiar with the business, including relevant laws and regulations, so in-house lawyers must keep up with new laws and regulations. Regarding judicial decisions, they still have a certain impact on the business or legal practice of the company. In the case of a Nanjing double contract dispute handled by the company, the company won the case at the first instance and the owner appealed. After the owner appealed, we learned that the Nanjing Intermediate Court intended to send it back to the court of first instance for retrial, with the intention of rescheduling the judgment in support of the owner’s claim. The reason is that in the judicial judgment of another pair of contract disputes in Nanjing, the developer company lost the case, that is, the court ruled that the developer should return the decoration price difference to the owner on the basis of the decoration appraisal results. In this emergency, the Nanjing legal team and I immediately led nine local developers in Nanjing to write to the president of the Jiangsu Higher Court in the form of emergency reports, indicating the attitude of the real estate industry and highlighting the legal point of view. After safeguarding some rights, the above mentioned double contract dispute case was suspended. It is understood that the Higher Court and government departments in Jiangsu Province attach great importance to the problems reflected by the company in conjunction with other developers and enterprises, and will carefully discuss before dealing with them.

When selecting a law firm, what criteria do you evaluate the potential firms by? When choosing a law firm, the lawyers should have professional legal skills, good service attitude, a high degree of cooperation, and preferential legal service charges. Professionalism is the most important element that I value when selecting a law firm. Not only should partners be professional, case handling lawyers and even paralegals should also reflect legal professionalism. In addition to a solid legal background, I also put great importance to the service attitude of lawyers. Just as what I require from my legal team, both in-house lawyers and external lawyers should have a good service attitude. Thirdly, external lawyers should highly cooperate with the company’s instructions, respond quickly, be timely and efficient, and strive to provide legal advice for the company’s business decisions. Finally, legal service charges should conform to the market standard and be competitive. High service charges are not beneficial for long-term cooperation between the company and the law firm. What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry? From the business’s perspective, a successful in-house lawyer should not only have excellent legal skills and be familiar with industry policies and regulations, but also understand and be close to the business, be able to master the industry trend and put forward practical plans for the development of business. In the current highly competitive business environment, the requirements for in-house lawyers are higher than ever. They are required to be well versed in business rules and have strong communication and coordination skills.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years? In the next few years, in-house lawyers will change from a single legal risk prevention and control role to a full business process one, providing legal advice at the front, middle and back end of the company, which allows in-house counsel to manage overall legal risks and put forward concrete measures of legal risk prevention and control at the same time. What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this? Investment and financing as well as the IPO of industrial groups within the company will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months.

I have always attached great importance to the legal work of investments, financing and IPOs. For example, in February 2018, A-living Group, a property group owned by Agile, was successfully split up and listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, the first H-share property company in China. The legal team and I provided a full range of legal services for all aspects of the listing process. In the next 12 months, me and my legal team will continue to pay attention to the changes in policies and regulations related to the business, provide legal professional advice on the transaction structure of investment and financing projects or the structure of listed projects, and participate in the investment and financing work and listing of the company throughout the process.