Team size: Five   

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

Well, first, I need to recognise the effort of each team member who is assisting with their vital role in the department. For me, the key to achieving such stage is to think out of the box and try to think from the other party’s perspective, as it differs of course on case-to-case basis.  

Being in a large group of companies adds up to a considerable workload, which drives us to try new methods so we can adapt to the work requirement and the change in law, accordingly, I aimed to make things easier for other departments to save effort, cost, and time.  

For example, in collection cases, I held a couple of awareness sessions along with the HODs and the senior management to teach them how to collect evidence from their debtors that might help us in the legal department to avoid the normal litigation course and work with a more efficient way to litigate and get a verdict in our favour in a shorter time.  

I worked with them also on the statement to be used in their communications with their clients, so if any of their clients defaulted in the future, we can use such methods to act with ease to protect the group assets.  

Eventually, collaboration between different departments and following the right instructions assisted the legal department to play it’s one of its vital roles in the organisation which raise the recovery success rate by more than 300% in the past 3 years.  

How do you balance your responsibilities as a GC with your involvement in dispute resolution and M&A matters?   

The key to achieving the said balance lies in communication, transparency, and experience. Clear communication between the departments always makes everything much easier to execute and achieve the desired results, because the basic information given by the other departments and the experience gained through the years it will get you right on track in no time.  

Also having knowledgeable or trained business units makes it much easier and efficient, especially if you come up with a process to support your points of strength. Creating your calendar is vital for a major role in the organisation, as most of the time you would be on your toes, so being organised enough pays off at the end. 

Furthermore, the main role comes to how to prioritise my daily tasks and to keep some room for variable work, which gave me an edge to achieve the desired results and exposure also to the diversity of business.  

Can you discuss a particularly challenging dispute or M&A scenario you encountered and the innovative strategies you implemented to address it?   

I encountered an arbitration around 3 years back, in that particular case the organisation had suffered a serious cyber-attack, which left the organisation’s data completely blank, and after receiving the arbitration notice, I started communicating with the concerned department to gather the needed documents to prepare myself for such occurrence.  

But the said department had some difficulties retrieving the needed documents for that specific case, so I had to come up with something that saves the organisation and at least mitigate the risk of losing the award.  

Accordingly, I came up with the idea to include some statements in one of the memos, so the claimant had to respond to it by denying it through evidence, which happened as expected, and between those documents was one e-mail from the claimant providing a statement used to dismiss the award in my favour.