About

At Starbucks, Joana Johannsen adopts a clear approach: she recognises that there are topics that require outside counsel, but she has clearly identified these matters and has ‘overall drastically reduced the costs for external advisors’. She simultaneously took the initiative to transform the in-house department ‘into a business partner that is routinely involved at an early stage by all other departments’. Part of this strategy is the relentless training and education of her team, among others by offering the opportunity and provide encouragement to join associations such as the BUJ (Federal Association of Corporate Counsel). Looking back on 15 years in the industry she can recount numerous highlights, however, Johannsen’s definition of success is ‘being able to improve the cooperation between the legal department and other business units’, with the goal of ‘transforming the legal department into an advisor that is consulted early-on as a true business partner and that is on par with other departments’. There are daily challenges of a very different nature but one of the recurring themes is the challenge to ‘explain the German and European law to our US headquarters’, particularly regarding data protection, employment and industrial constitution law. Law firms should deliver ‘commercial legal judgements that can be forwarded to other employees without needing further explanation’.