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

The overarching goal for the legal team is to serve as an integral part of the business, functioning as a true business partner by providing pragmatic advice whilst safeguarding the commercial interests of the group. Legal is thereby supporting the main strategic objectives and initiatives of the business.

Being a smaller team in the region (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland), the focus is to allocate resources and efforts to areas that bring the most commercial value to the business, which is centered around our clients. For instance, the legal team produces business-centric legal templates and guidelines. Before implementation, these are presented and discussed in the commercial excellence group (a group consisting of stakeholders across agencies and business support functions) to agree on the ways of working and ensure a holistic approach. This includes rethinking the ways to draft and communicate as a lawyer, which ultimately helps in breaking down barriers and making it easier for the business to understand legal –which inherently requires that legal understands the business.

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

Our industry is ever-changing, dynamic, and complex – that makes it fun for a person like me (who enjoys being challenged in ways of thinking, problem-solving, and working) to be an in-house lawyer in this industry! Unpredictability and change are inherent in our field, whether it is due to new technology, business models, client expectations, changes in the competitive landscape, global economic conditions, or new regulations. As such, you need to be able to acknowledge and accept the dynamics of the industry and stay open and curious about it, even when it at times also entails great uncertainty. You have to be genuinely interested in understanding all of these dynamics and how they interplay, and you need a growth mindset to think of uncertainty as an opportunity to change in a positive direction. Since we are a people business, I also believe it is equally important to invest in the people and teams you work closely with. I practice doing just that every day. Whether it be my colleagues in our group, our partners, or the teams of a client, I put great effort into understanding the outset and outlook that people have and focus on how to set the best foundation for collaboration.

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

I believe the best foundation for collaboration is establishing trust because that will foster and nurture the crucial relationships with the business that enables you to gain access to the relevant people and knowledge, thereby fostering (even) closer and (even more) fruitful collaboration. As mentioned above, I am curious about understanding the people I work with and understanding and being open to their points of views and I believe this makes my colleagues want to proactively involve and engage with me and use me as a sounding board.

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

I believe in ‘passing it on’ — passing on kindness, knowledge, experience, outlook, and more. I think if one is in a privileged position of being able to help others, one should do so. I am particularly passionate about mentoring and coaching in that respect, and therefore I volunteered as a mentor about one year ago. Although my mentee and I have officially run out of sessions under that specific mentoring programme structure, we are continuing our one-to-one sessions. I have also sought out inspiring people myself and asked them if they would like to offer their mentorship to me. So, I currently have three mentors engaged, each of whom I learn from and use in different ways and for different objectives and I find it incredibly valuable.