Team size: 30

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

My team is very diverse when it comes to the work we do. Some examples of the work my team has been involved in recently include: (i) Driving the adoption of generative AI, initially experimenting to understand its functionality and application, but subsequently to develop use cases that assists in key processes such as contract reviews, compliance documentation, or communication and training material. The team is already exporting this knowledge to the rest of the company to accelerate the digital transformation; (ii) absorbing compliance as a key function of the team, which required designing an annual wheel for training and awareness campaigns, preparing and reporting on an overview of compliance areas that are critical or relevant for the company, and developing legal standards in compliance areas such as ethics, healthcare, ESG or AI; (iii) conducting acquisitions mostly with internal resources both in Denmark and abroad, which include due diligence, drafting and negotiating documentation, and securing both public and private approvals and consents; (iv) simplifying the corporate structure of the group by reducing the number of legal entities globally from approx. 250 to 70, which included different corporate transactions in several jurisdictions and required adjusting internal governance and approval rules; (v) protecting the interest of the company before public bodies that either insource activities that until recently have been outsourced to private contractors or challenge the use of cloud-based systems. In all such cases, the team supports the business on public-relations and lobbying initiatives and leads on disputes and negotiations.

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

A key measure of success for in-house lawyers is to continuously be invited to share our view. This may be both an expert view based on legal knowledge, and a pragmatic view based on business understanding. To be successful according to this measure, in-house lawyers need to have a good balance between three qualities: (i) to listen with empathy, which involves understanding dilemmas and concerns as well as being interested in current and future business; (ii) to take action with responsibility, which is not only about being responsive and cost-effective on specific assignments, but increasingly about taking ownership of wider company processes and driving transformation; and (iii) to lead with pragmatism, which requires both developing the team to meet internal and external requirements and ensuring that the business performs in the context of higher compliance requirements.

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

Collaboration with the business requires a continuous and patient effort. My team has been working very actively for years with a ‘business partner’ model that involves having team members taking a first point-of-contact role to different business units to ensure we know and understand the business and the elements that drive risks and opportunities. Through this ‘business partner’ model we build a relationship with both business executives and lower-level managers where we handle ad-hoc assignments and we continuously promote both strategic dialogue, training, standardisation and self-service.

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

My cause is to bring more value to the business because that inspires everything we do. The challenge is that it is difficult to show the empirical value of our work. But everything we do is, in essence, directed at increasing value for the business: it can be an initiative to develop in-house legal competences in the healthcare and medical space, because that is the strategic direction of the company and the business will need commercial, marketing or privacy support; it can also be to promote a cohesive team, where team members find it interesting, feel they develop and communicate internally; it can, of course, be to lead the way to leverage on generative AI to improve processes.