Team size: Nine

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 legal team ensures through regular catch ups with business line leaders and teams’ proximity and alignment with business goals and strategy. The team is also part of ad hoc strategy & risk mitigating working groups (e.g. Covid, Sanctions against Russia etc.).

The general counsel meets on a regular basis with country and finance leaders and participates in the formal board of directors’ meetings. First-hand information on status of the German business and identified risks helps build legal strategy.

Regular catch ups of Legal team members help to share insights, deals, identified risks and discuss legal developments to close potential gaps.

As a consequence, the team can tailor existing templates to the business needs and develop a negotiation strategy with clients. Proper education areas are being discovered and communicated to the business.

What are the main cases or transactions that you have been involved in recently?

Legal Management of change of business model / restructuring of business in CEE countries (Hungary, Czech Rep, Romania, Slovakia), navigating four different foreign jurisdictions; managing and resolving complex employment disputes with high profile executives; Creation and execution of employment law / people & performance management/psychology trainings for business leaders; team involved in creation and implementation of industry wide standard NDA template in conjunction with real estate clients and law firms to speed up real estate transactions.

How do you measure the impact of ESG initiatives on the company’s overall performance and reputation?

Regulation has imposed obligations on Clients. As a consequence, clients are increasingly interested in assessing compliance management programmes and sustainability and Corporate Responsibility initiatives of contract partners. Demonstrating a robust programme in this regard is a differentiator and key to generate new business. At the same time ESG initiatives support mitigating risks for the organisation, avoiding fines and reputation losses through public scrutiny.

How have you integrated technology into your legal processes, and what impact has this had on efficiency and compliance?

Introduction and use of AI tool specifically designed for the company. This allows the Legal team to generate AI operated translations, legal review of contracts and creation of legal docs, comparison of documents in all languages etc. The team can strongly focus on being an advisor to the business.

Also, we have introduced a legal case and costs management tool allowing us to track and control legal costs and assess risks and other metrics.

Furthermore, we have implemented a tool to channel all legal requests through an electronic contract intake/question for legal tool, enabling flexibility and better reach of the Legal team. It also provides the general counsel with metrics to gain an overview of legal service delivery with regards to volume of cases, reaction time /speed) and assessment of frequently asked questions. This enables the team to tackle identified topics and risks proactively.

What do you see as the major legal challenges for businesses in Germany over the next five years, and how are you preparing to address them?

Heavy EU and German regulation and geo-political crisis add complexity to business (e.g. supply chain management); global undertaking/corporations operating with vertical /matrix organisation and reporting lines/need to ensure that local operation of business follows local developments and laws. Education of matrix managers is key.

Business information and data will be key for corporations, protection of own and use of third-party information for business related purposes will be a major driver to success. Lastly, streamlining of already existing risk detecting and assessment procedures, enhanced and tool based client DD, required adjustments to contract templates, stronger education/training of business teams, and increased use of AI and technology will help the team to focus on main risks and developments and help business growth.