Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense? 

Two years ago, my team and I realised that we were receiving similar questions on the same topics from our legal teams around the world. Our answers to these questions tend to be almost identical every time. We did not have a way to spread this knowledge and automate finding it.  

Apart from training people and providing them with handy material, we decided to create one-page “Battle Cards” for each of these questions and post them in our internal legal learning and development SharePoint. The Battle Cards contained basic guidance and links to templates of short agreements, terms and conditions or standard answers. We also took advantage of the chatbot we already had in our legal department, and we developed the tool to help our team members identify where to find answers to their questions.  

Trainings remain important for the success of our team, and we have also created a new way to deliver them. To enable a global legal department to undergo training, we opted for recorded trainings that can be simultaneously launched to all our countries’ teams. The recorded trainings are short, lively, and address business scenarios for each of the lessons. After the launch of a training and team members watch the recording, a couple of recorded Q&A sessions are hosted – with consideration given to different time zones – for people to discuss the trainings. Training and Q&A sessions are then made available on our legal learning and development site.  

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?  

We support a breadth of new routes to market our company and partner ecosystem, helping them create value for customers. Our aim is to help simplify contracting and accelerate the transaction closing time. My team has largely contributed to creating globally applicable programs for our partners. We have been a major stakeholder for the creation of the unique multi-use template of terms and conditions for all service offerings of the company.  

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this? 

HPE collaborates with external lawyers who align with our standards regarding social responsibility, business conduct and inclusion and diversity.