Team size: 15 

Major legal advisers: Baker & Mackenzie, Allen&Overy, AS&H Clifford Chance.  

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?  

Almarai is the world’s largest vertically integrated dairy company, with operations across 9 countries including all the GCC counties, Egypt, Jordan, Romania, in the US California and Arizona and in South America Argentina. Our brand has ranked among the top 10 most valuable dairy brands in the world in 2022 by Brand Finance and we rank #11 in market cap vs global F&B players including Coca-Cola, Nestle, PepsiCo and others.  

Protecting our brands across all the countries we operate, in 4 continents and being able to monitor real time our brand registration and TM status registry is key for our business and products we offer to consumers. In this connection we worked together with our IT team and managed to build on our existing on-line management platform system a separate tool whereby we manage on-line all our Trademarks and value, expiration, visuals can be extracted real time and are readily available for legal and business teams. This application was designed internally between the Legal Team and our IT team and came at a minimal additional cost.  

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

The legal team at Almarai acts as an “enabler” of the business strategy and partners closely with the Almarai Business Units. The following competencies are key in delivering my responsibilities:  

1) empowering and mentoring my team members by keeping them motivated and inspired;  

2) delegating and coordinating appropriately the work to achieve specific KPIs;  

3) being new in the role, managing emotions at difficult times proved cornerstone to show understanding and empathy to others;  

4) grasping the business strategy and aligning the Legal function’s strategy with the long-term plan and business strategy fosters strategic mindset;  

5) being tenacious and perseverant when faced with challenges helps navigating under pressure;  

6) willingness to evolve and flexibility allows me to adapt to the constant, rapid changes in business needs and legal environment.  

Even at highly contentious cases long-term business strategy plays a fundamental role. Equally on M&A being part of the whole design and thinking of the business strategy helps me align the legal expertise and input in an M&A with what will maximise business impact.  

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years?  

The following two general imperatives should be top of mind for every general counsel building a next-generation legal department for the next 5-years: (a) clarifying the functional purpose and priorities; and (b) setting up for a changing legal ecosystem.  

Comparing business activities and priorities with how and where in-house lawyers spend their time is key. Should the legal department focus more on drafting complex commercial contracts for new projects, managing external counsel to handle mass litigation, or responding to day-to-day requests? New means of collaboration and technology are changing the legal ecosystem. Technological developments are increasing the volume of data to be processed, and adding technology skills to the department’s talent needs is a must. Automation on contract creation will be key to extract low value work from the legal department and manage this through AI and systems that can be easily navigated by business teams.