Team size: 25

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

Although not yet finalised, our legal team has been involved in forming a business alliance with a client company through a joint-venture structure. The challenge here was that our business team did not have sufficient knowledge of the JV structure. Therefore, our legal team set up a series of learning sessions with the support of external counsellors to bring the business, legal and other relevant team members fully up to speed. The main objectives were to establish common ground between internal teams, which makes internal project discussions more efficient and effective, and to build up a knowledge base within the company.

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

We handle a high volume of contracts with customers and suppliers daily and efficient and proper contract review is crucial. One approach we recently took was to implement an internal process to bypass legal team review. This meant defining the types of contracts that the business team is responsible for reviewing and signing without the involvement of the legal team. We used a legal risk matrix analysis to determine the definition of contracts eligible for the bypass process. We also provided a checklist and guideline for contract reviews to help the business team determine when they needed to contact the legal team for guidance. We successfully obtained approval from senior management to proceed with our commitment to properly manage legal risk. This process has significantly reduced the ‘downtime’ by several days for when the business team awaits legal review.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values?

It is essential to identify external counsel which possess excellent capability and understanding of our business as well as our people, culture, and values. It can take time to nurture the relationship with our external lawyers but once established, they are a great asset to the legal team.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

I strongly believe that maintaining good contact with your business partners, external lawyers and in-house community is beneficial to understanding legal developments, technological trends, and common challenges. You can learn a lot from their experiences and at the same time contribute to the community by sharing your thoughts and experience.