About

Björn Ley heads an international team of lawyers and has successfully achieved a ‘deeper understanding and implementation of our business partner concept’, which in concrete terms means that legal is ‘not only a support function for our business, but a partner in the decision making process, even when it comes to non-legal issues’. Key here is to ‘advise on all matters of risk management, highlight – not only legal – risks early-on and develop solutions’. Highlights for Ley are therefore projects where he worked with a team of technical, commercial and legal staff during the negotiation phase, while a particular challenge in this context was to quickly grasp new areas of law or foreign legal frameworks. He enjoys ‘jointly with the management, finding solutions for issues that often are only marginally legal issues’. Law firms should always consider ‘the respective recipient of their work’. He regards it as crucial to distinguish between ‘purely legal statements and documents that are being used by management to make decisions’. The latter require ‘clear summaries without lengthy disclaimers’.