About

Since 2010 Udo Müller has been in charge of the entire EMEA region and heads a team of 21 lawyers in nine locations, while the team size has almost tripled since he joined. A significant structural change has been the introduction of the contract manager role, ‘colleagues who are qualified lawyers and who focus on the design and drafting of our contracts’; a response to the ‘ever increasing number and complexity of contracts in recent years’. He also opted for splitting tasks and transferring them to teams of specialists as ‘we were unable to cover all matters with the existing model’. These subject area teams have been set up for the areas of public sector, employment law, immigration law, data protection and IP as well as M&A, while each team features members from several regions. Müller has been instrumental in the team’s continuous growth across locations: ‘Just recently we have strengthened our team in Africa to meet the increased demand in the region’. A continuous challenge however is finding the balance between various interests and the search for viable solutions within the EMEA team. ‘Colleagues with various cultural and legal backgrounds, among them from South Africa, Sudan, Dubai, Europe, and Russia, have to reach conclusions within a short time’. Partly due to these complexities and the resulting time pressure he expects external advisors to deliver solutions that are ‘also usable by non-lawyers’, that is ‘explanations that can be forwarded to the relevant departments if necessary’.