About

Christian Unsinn leads the five-person legal team of Lemon Group Services, the shared services centre of advertising powerhouse DDB Germany, and oversees legal matters for 23 group agencies. In addition to this, he acts as the chief operating officer of the company and counts another 63 individuals relating to data protection, compliance, HR and other matters as direct reports. Despite the demanding goal of managing these diverse interests under one roof, Unsinn explains that he has built a formidable reputation for the legal team throughout the company: ‘I have consolidated the legal services of the entities of the German DDB group into one legal department, and along with this my legal team became the number one team in the services appreciation amongst the group’s agencies despite some early reservations from some parts of the business as to whether this could be achieved efficiently. Plus, and this is the main change, under my leadership the legal department started to handle 99 per cent of all matters in-house; the agencies of the German DDB group appreciate our legal services as being faster and more to the point than advice from external experts, which has led to a much wider acceptance and, more importantly, better involvement of our legal department by the agencies’ teams’. Unsinn is proud of both his own and his teams’ broad skillset in a variety of areas. ‘We are a full-service legal department’, he explains, ‘that specialises in copyright law, trademark law, fair competition law, personal rights law, media law, licences, contracts, company law as well as employment law’. On top of this, he has always sought to fulfil a number of key objectives when practicing: ‘I counsel to the point and with practical suggestions for actions to be taken at all times; willing to take risks when necessary; care for the commercial details of any project; and learn and understand the company’s commercial, organisational and technical details at all times’.