Based on your experience, what is the key to collaborating successfully with business partners?
You are better positioned to give relevant and appropriate legal advice if you know the industry and business of the company well. In this connection, demonstrating interest in their business is a great way to show that you are there to help them and their business, rather than an obstacle to the business. The key here is have the business partners believe that Legal is on the same team and is there to assist them to achieve their business objectives, so that Legal is one of their trusted advisers—this means that the business is never hesitant to approach Legal and would proactively seek Legal’s help without any concerns that Legal is their “blocker”.

Are the effects of AI on the legal world overplayed, or underplayed?
It still seems a bit too early to assess how AI may or may not affect the legal profession, but one area that has significantly impacted my work is translations. Translating contracts and legal documents was a big burden either in terms of manpower or expense, especially in multinational companies where overseas reporting is common. Initially, machine and AI translations were completely useless when the original text was even moderately complex. I still do not believe that machine and AI translations can replace manual, human translations in the next five years for precise and accurate translations of contracts and legal documents; however, they are now certainly good enough to get an understanding of the relevant documents that is generally accurate, dispensing with the need for translation in many instances.
Use of AI for legal research seems helpful especially at the initial stage to get an elementary understanding of the relevant issues. However, I think the challenge is that the answers generated by AI generally do not provide any citations or sources, making it extremely difficult to verify the accuracy or whether the answer is up to date. Given how quickly things are moving in the tech sector, I would not be surprised if these issues are somehow addressed in the next few years to transform how lawyers perform legal research or draft contracts.