How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

The general secretariat is a risk prevention and management team given the departments it covers — legal, insurance, compliance and security — and plays a central role in crisis response.

The crisis plan is prepared in advance as a crisis is generally unpredictable. Advance preparation is indispensable to effectively manage a crisis when it occurs. The first role of the team is to ensure that the crisis management plan is in place, updated, and known by all actors.

During the crisis, the role of the team involves identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks that could lead to legal liabilities. This includes understanding the legal environment, preparing for potential legal challenges, and aligning legal strategies with broader crisis management efforts.

The team participates in crisis meetings, advising, and ensuring that all necessary legal actions are taken promptly including contract management, client claims, insurers relations, enhance security, support the communication team, performing an analysis of the situations. This includes coordinating with teams in the village, office, and lawyers. The team also validates the internal and external communication.

Finally, the team participates in the REX meetings and to the follow up of the post-crisis actions plan.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

The general secretariat is both a direct player in the ESG approach through the compliance department, and the legal department (duty of vigilance, sapin II, board secretariat, foundation secretariat), the health hygiene safety department (general risk mapping , health and safety at work and more), strong partner of the CSR department in structuring projects (CSRD, Tertiary Decree, Agec Law, BREEAM or GreenGlobe certification), involved in several workstreams of the major Club Med Scale project up Happy To care — our commitment to responsible tourism and one of the five pillars of the strategy -   and support from the University of Talents (participation in training as speakers or participants on ESG subjects).

The general secretariat team is also very aware – like the other GOs immersed in the Happy to care project – by eco-gestures (turning off lights, electronic equipment, unplugging electrical outlets, reducing use heating or air conditioning, use of the train when possible, use of a personalised mug, preference for stairs, saving water, reduction of food waste during convivial moment.

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?

The General Secretariat (GS) one of Club Med’s AI ambassador departments. As part of the development of AI within Club Med, we quickly created a special relationship with the data and AI team with the implementation of projects for the company and for the team: we are supporting the digital and AI department in the supervision of the use of AI within the group with setting up (i) an ethics committee on which the compliance director and the business law director sit, (ii) the dissemination of golden rules for the use of AI with responsibility and transparency within the company, (iii) the review of AI projects with regard to the applicable regulations.

We also set up workshops to define together the pain points of the various teams in the GS and then the possible uses of AI to relieve the teams and improve performance. A project manager was appointed to help me with the implementation. As part of the project, the team was also a ‘tester’ for Microsoft’s Copilot AI tool, and the project manager was part of the Club Med team for the Club Med Microsoft Hackaton, one of the first of its kind in France.

The following projects have been set up or are in the process of being finalised in the GS based on AI: – Bibl-IA-thèque (as part of the Hackaton): development of an intelligent Contratheque, Translation tool, ‘Legal Coffee Copilot’ internal discussion forums to facilitate the adoption and integration of Copilot Microsoft into the legal profession, and the project for a library of prompts to facilitate adoption of the tool and the sharing of effective use cases.