Team size: 20

Can you give an idea of the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our legal team has evolved from being an in-house legal team with BESTSELLER as the sole client to now being the in-house legal team of the entire HEARTLAND group, providing legal advice to various companies and enterprises.

Our team is, therefore, on a day-to-day basis involved in many diverse legal issues in nature, size and complexity, and we always strive to take advantage of the many synergies that arise.

Our main client remains BESTSELLER, and the core specialities that we have represented in our legal team are aligned with its needs.

One of the main cases we have recently been involved in is building a high-tech logistics centre in Lelystad, the Netherlands. A DKK 2 bn investment in a high-tech facility focusing on automation and sustainability, with a storage capacity of up to 2,000,000 cartons and 5,300,000 pieces picked per week. Our legal team is deeply involved in the project and manages many legal tracks.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

As the legal department of a group focusing on several areas such as fashion, retail and technology, sustainability and business innovation, renewables and many more, it comes naturally to us to look closely at the ongoing focus on AI and IT solutions that will make the providing of legal advice much more effective. We have started our internal process of finding the right solutions for our team to make sure that we are focusing our time on the tasks that create the most value for the business and for our team by creating standard forms for information collection, automation of reoccurring processes, digital ‘clauses bank’ for drafting contracts.

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

BESTSELLER is a company within which we refer to ourselves as the BESTSELLER family. This means that we regard each other as family members we need to assist in the best way possible – and if one colleague cannot help with a specific query, this colleague makes sure to at least help find another colleague who can. We believe this is the best way to create an internal network in the company and build strong relationships across teams.

We aim to take this BESTSELLER way of working and expand it to the companies we assist in the HEARTLAND portfolio to become an even larger family where help is always near.

Solid relationships with business partners are built by providing legal advice and guidance, with the business object always being the centre of attention. We know that the legal department is a support function to the core business, and we are not here to point out that someone is doing something wrong but to ensure that the company succeeds in whatever the business scope is. We always aim to provide risk-based legal advice that can be easily implemented, and we help create structure and drive projects so our business partners can focus on their core abilities and tasks, such as creativity and business development. All in all, we believe that this entails that the business reaches out for our advice to a more considerable extent.