Team size: Four

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

Whereas the specific cases and/or transactions are confidential Wipro’s Nordic business has been significantly growing year over year. The Nordic legal team has played a pivotal role in negotiating and adding a significant number of new logos to the Wipro contract portfolio during 2023/24, making the Nordics a growth pocket for Wipro. Except for a few planned exits, then existing contracts were extended and/or renewed. Furthermore, there is a promising list of potential new contracts in pipeline. These results led to the achievement of the so-called Growth Accelerator Award issued by Founder and President Azim Premji for Raising the Bar.

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

The unique qualities required to be successful is to enable a successful team; (a) to create value; (b) to have an ability to synthesise legal, marketplace, commercial and risk factors when arriving at advice; (c) to be knowledgeable about the business and the competitive environment; (d) to be able to articulate advice with clarity; (e) to have strong technical legal skills; (f) to have strong drafting skills; (g) to be able to bring legal insights alive for the business; (h) to be accountable, responsive and dependable and have a real tenacity to follow through when the stakes get high; and (i) to maintain intellectual independence.

I try and inspire my team to be business enablers. Become the department of “yes” by steering the business partners in the right direction.

In my role it is important to lead and organise the work. This starts with the ability to earn personal and team credibility (i.e., earn the trust and confidence of colleagues by delivering on business commitments) and moves on to the ability to demonstrate legal mastery (i.e., build the necessary legal/secretariat qualifications and deploy these for business benefit) as well as showing good judgement and governance (i.e., aim to be a custodian of ethical standards and exercise sound judgement in applying legal principles). Likewise, it is important to bring a set of legal leadership imperative behaviours in the form of an ability to build business partnerships (see next section) and have good commercial insight (i.e. the ability to spot issues and opportunities and frame legal advice).

How have you fostered a closer collaboration between the legal department and your business counterparts?  

Business partnerships are typically based on business-focused collaborative relationships with colleagues where you manage to overcome obstacles and create commercial advantage while minimising exposure to liability and risk. The collaborative relationships are typically fostered when you manage to articulate advice clearly, in a way which is actionable, within the business context.

In my case it all starts with building the personal relationships at local and regional level. Naturally, it helps if you can represent Legal at the leadership meetings or townhalls. It is generally appreciated when you leverage those relationships with a view to constructively challenge the way the business views issues and opportunities. Jump into the discussions and play a key role in setting the boundaries. Remember, we are not paid to make “grey” advice. Always try and frame the key legal issues in a clear, precise and actionable way for your colleagues and business partners. Thereafter, inspire confidence in your personal and professional command of the issue. Work with your colleagues to minimise exposure to liability and risk. If you can combine your legal and business skills to identify opportunities for commercial advantage, then you are set up for success with your business partners.

Not everyone, especially in the lower ranks, will understand why legal need to be involved or why it can take more than five minutes to read hundreds of pages. For that reason, it is very important to have established business partnerships in key positions within the organisation.

The way I have tried to foster close collaboration is to motivate my team to manage for success; give the business in a legal and ethical way; and bring core legal and managerial skillsets into action.

Do you have a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you are passionate about?  

Apart from being passionate about our brand, our people and energetically and tenaciously trying to deliver against own goals and those of the business I also have a personal as well as business-relevant cause by arranging the annual Nordic Legal Tech Day Conference in Denmark.

I’m passionate about legal tech because it helps modernize how legal support is delivered by providing efficient, scalable services to the business. By example, a lot of companies are trying to find ways to manage its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance with a view to be compliant with the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). There are in fact legal tech tools which can analyze, validate, and visualize sustainability data with a view to report such data into various frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

I’m a firm believer that we need gather forces and share experiences on a cross-functional basis to see change. Hopefully the effect of these initiatives will spread like ripples from a small stone dropped into a pond.