How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

The impact of the pandemic had various effects on the role of in-house counsel. The most significant one was a shift towards an effectiveness perspective. Considering remote working, for example, people have become managers of themselves. They oversee their own time, focusing on effectiveness rather than efficiency; the news and the continuous changing environment led people to operate with urgency, but prioritising the workload based on its importance. Pre-pandemic that was not possible, and urgent matters would take over the importance of tasks because of the pressure of someone walking through the door in the office. On the other hand, working from home guarantees the flexibility to focus on the important stuff at your own pace. At management level, there has been a demand to adopt a leadership approach to control changes.

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

Working for an engineering company which designs plants for the metals industry, we are deeply impacted by various of the current ‘megatrends’: sustainability, AI and machine learning, 3D printing. Our legal team is helping the business to manage these breakthrough changes by protecting our innovative intellectual property in these fields and favouring collaboration with technology partners by crafting dedicated agreements. Specifically in relation to sustainability we are establishing collaborations related to the use of hydrogen (versus polluting fossil minerals) and this technology could eventually lead to the dismissal of the blast furnace, which would represent an historical moment for the industry. We are also highly involved in revisiting governance from an ESG perspective. This is done, among other things, by reforming all our internal processes to always grant transparency, traceability, and separation of duties in any decision-making process.

What do you feel are the pros and cons of an in-house legal role compared to a private practice one?

There are several pros to pursuing an in-house career. The general counsel has the opportunity to be a ‘T-shaped’ professional, who has both the breadth to cover various matters with his “generalist hat” but is also required to provide the necessary depth on a single field (a bit like private practice lawyers, who typically have more specialist skills, and tend to be focused on ‘how’ to do things, while the general counsel usually are involved in deciding the ‘what.’) Another advantage of being in-house is the proximity to the business and the ability to provide added value rather than mere technical expertise in private practice. On the other hand, the greater cons I see relate to the non-flexibility of being linked to a single source of income.