About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

One high profile and complex acquisition of another chemical conglomerate expanding across the US, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. No significant litigations for the past two years.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

In-house lawyers should develop and sharpen their business acumen and business mind-sets to collaborate with business partners more effectively. To be high profile business lawyers, in addition to having solid practice skills and experience, in-house lawyers need to keep interest in the latest business developments and trends and adapt their delivery of legal services accordingly and smartly. Furthermore, in-house lawyers need to set up and maintain constant and dynamic communication with business colleagues as their internal clients and such communication definitely will widen in-house lawyers’ vision and perspective regarding the actual business world, key issues to be addressed by lawyers, and the compatibility between business purposes and legal advice.

What “legal tech” products do you currently utilise, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

We are using legal databases such as LexisNexis and certain AI-based legal tools such as machine learning tools to facilitate our work. Of course I anticipate we will implement more in the near future. Looking forward, it is almost definitive that legal tech will change or even transform the legal work landscape gradually i.e. starting from the simple and routine legal work such as template document review then further expanding to the wider sphere of legal work with more depth.

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

China’s cybersecurity law has impacted our business to the material extent. As most multinational companies’ IT infrastructure is set-up by a top-down approach i.e. the headquarters cascades down to the local affiliates or subsidiaries, when China’s cybersecurity law took effect, many multinational companies’ affiliates or subsidiaries faced material challenges under the statutory requirements of Chinas’ cybersecurity law with Chinese features. Also, China’s cybersecurity law is still developing as more and more supplementary regulations are promulgated and implemented from time to time, all of this makes it more difficult for multinational companies’ affiliates or subsidiaries to comply with regulations due to the lack of guidance and clarity.

What do you feel are the most effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them?

Open and constructive communication based on trust built over the years with the external counsel. In addition, in-house lawyers need to set up and enhance the bilateral communication with the external legal counsel by arranging periodical meetings during which the external legal counsel can better understand and sense their clients’ latest developments and changes whilst the in-house lawyers can better understand the challenges confronting the external legal counsel such as time and
personnel allocation for different clients and projects. Then both parties’ collaboration will be strengthened based on better transparency and trust.

How do you feel in-house legal leaders can successfully introduce and implement a culture within a legal department?

Always act as the role model, be mindful towards the colleagues and keep open-minded to new ideas and thoughts from others. Furthermore, incessant mentoring and exposing young talents to challenging projects and issues whilst monitoring and supporting them with a distance has been proved to be a smart approach of developing young talents into mature and senior in-house lawyers.

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

The ability to deliver tailor made and practical
legal services based on solid legal expertise and deep insights into the business. In addition to the above, strong communication skills is also an important quality that successful in-house lawyers should have.

FOCUS ON… To become an in-house lawyer equipped with leadership, we need to be role models, work hard and develop a sound perspective and winning spirit. Under the ongoing VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, confusion and ambiguity) world, globalisation is facing significant challenges from different angles driven by populism. Facing all these challenges, in-house lawyers are facing heavier workloads than ever before in terms of seeing the company through all kinds of regulatory complexities with robust compliance efforts as well as their legal expertise in different fields of corporate business operations. By being role models, in-house lawyers can motivate other functional and business colleagues to reach the next level of compliance, benefiting the company as a whole. Only by working hard can in-house lawyers manage all kinds of transactional work and compliance tasks more efficiently. Lifelong learning and developing sound perspectives will give in-house lawyers better and higher perspectives which will lead to sound judgement, which is a crucial and successful factor for high profile business lawyers. Despite all the challenges and heavy workload, bearing the winning spirit throughout the course of daily house-keeping legal work and transactional work will ensure in-house lawyers and their teams to march towards the destination confidently without hesitation or complaints. Overall, the importance of leadership for high profile in-house lawyers can never be exaggerated nowadays. Finally, thanks to their solid legal education and deep insights into the business and corporate world, highly capable in-house lawyers also have a better position to demonstrate their leadership throughout all aspects of professional legal work.