Team size: 15

Major legal advisers: Matheson

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

Last year our team has been focused on a number of global over $10m licensing deals with music providers, AI and game developers for our social and gaming apps. We have expanded our business with content creators, broadcasters, and web 3.0 developers in Asia and Europe. Game production and development on our platforms is mainly outsourced to trusted third parties in Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK. We are excited to see the new AI driven products on our platforms enhancing user experiences. In addition, Riley Cillian is reforming our global corporate structures as we relocate parts of the business from Asia to Ireland. We have also been working hard with outsourced content moderation providers to ensure our user experiences are positive and safe.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

The advent of new fast-paced technologies, beyond those we have seen in the last ten years, will place in-house legal teams front and centre in the way their organisations grow, develop, and take risk in areas where often the law continues to lag behind. This means the in-house lawyers will not only have to be specialists in their given field, but they will increasingly have to take on responsibility for business decisions and be further embedded in the business. GDPR has given rise to legal specialists who are charged with incredible internal and external responsibility in the privacy arena. The interplay of issues such as AI, content manipulation and output, creator economies and financial regulations will further require specialist legal teams to support their business especially around acceptable risk areas. Building products on a one-size fits all basis can work in some business sense, but in the fragmented legal world there are trade-offs to be made against legal compliance. The way the large tech firms dealt with new content regulations in China, Turkey and Russia indicates how this new wave of legal support will develop.

As we enter the next decade, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

The pandemic brought us the challenge of working entirely in remote environments, yet managers were tasked to increase productivity balanced against less social interaction and growing uncertainties for their teams. On top of the traditional and fundamental skill sets, the new legal managers, beyond being generally empathetic, will also need to develop their understanding of how individual characteristics and strengths interplays with their team dynamics. Doing so will lead to more effective team integration and stronger results.