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

It is an exciting time at Vuelta Group as we continue to expand and acquire top European local production and distribution companies, ensuring our presence as a pan-European leader in the film and media sector.

Vuelta Group has a presence in Germany (SquareOne), the Nordics (Scanbox), France (Playtime and Pan), and in Italy (Indiana Productions). We recently acquired the long-established German content house, Telepool and its subsidiaries in Germany, and additional expansion and growth are envisaged this year.

In addition to planned acquisitions and strategic growth, building out commercial functions for the group, including legal and compliance functions, is a priority, working closely with our subsidiaries and stakeholders.

In your role, how do you balance the need to protect the organisation’s interests today while also considering legal implications and opportunities that may arise in the future? 

In-house legal has an enviable position of having oversight of all aspects of a business and being able to input into the future direction and organisational growth strategy. It is essential for me to continually stand back and view the bigger picture of Vuelta Group’s strategy and future plan.

Lawyers are inherent problem solvers, anticipating risk and trying to mitigate and provide commercial work arounds. We can bring these skills to a transaction or contract negotiation but also ensure that we regularly look up and horizon scan for what is coming down the road, be it sectorial changes, activities with competitors, new legal and compliance obligations, or the ever evolving and exciting opportunities with tech and AI. In an ever-changing and complex geo-political world, being aware of relevant matters, albeit sometimes outside our control, allows us to anticipate and pivot if necessary.

How have you attempted to bring the legal department closer to your business colleagues?

As a trusted business partner, in-depth knowledge of the business is essential, and fostering a culture of togetherness allows a legal team to work in tandem with all aspects of the business but alignment is key. Everyone has the same goal in mind; we are just wearing different hats to assist us getting there. Getting in early at the initial planning stage, ensuring commercial decisions are being taken with a clear awareness of commercial and legal risk is essential. While there are great advantages to remote working, good communication is essential with in-person meetings playing an even greater role, especially when there are contentious matters on the table.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Ireland over the next five-ten years?

The landscape for general counsel or in-house legal in Ireland and globally has never been more exciting!

With increased recognition of the value add an in-house lawyer can bring to an organisation, participating at the C-suite is not only smart for the business, ensuring well informed and tested strategic and organisational decision making, it also sets the tone for how the organisation views legal and compliance, ensuring robust processes and controls are in place.

Governance, legal, and compliance come into all aspects of the business, and the role of in-house legal has evolved as the commercial world and organisations see its increasing value as a commercial advisor, deal maker, mediator, and trusted colleague.

We are also seeing the role of legal operations increase in organisations. This has been the unseen role of an in-house lawyer, but now it can be a standalone role, ensuring legal and operational functions are strategic and effective to support the business.

The legal remit is also increasing and can include governance and director matters, ESG, organisational risk, compliance, insurance, among others. It is also not uncommon for the people function in an organisation to now report into Legal.

We cannot consider the future and what might evolve without the obvious considerations to technology and the benefits and efficiencies that this can bring to any business. There are a plethora of contracting management tools and risk management applications with AI features to ensure greater efficiencies and processes are in place to advise and support the business and to deal with the ever-increasing in-house legal workload. Always considered and used with that cautious lawyer awareness I should add!

However, in an increasingly artificial intelligence world, emotional intelligence should not be underestimated. A lawyer can anticipate potential deal roadblocks or commercial risks and assist in the expectation management and relationship management of these. This is underestimated by most organisations but is likely to be an ever-increasing part of the role of an in-house lawyer.