Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

With the emerging technology at our disposal, the role of the general counsel will evolve in Nigeria over the next five years. With the quick change in the consumer market and stricter controls on legal review, the general counsel must continuously deal with a wide range of challenging legal issues and substantial crucial involvement with the company’s boards. The general counsel must ensure they tackle the impact of recent economic and technological happenings.

As we know, the general counsel’s role goes beyond providing legal advice and being accountable to the board and company. The general counsel will be relied upon to provide commercial advice, which will be of maximum benefit and importance to organisations.

With the emerging technology that in-house counsel are now involved with, the executive boards are expected to pave the way for more influential and potential decision-making over the next five years. External counsel will only be sourced to provide added value if internal resources required to handle the task at hand are minimal or if there is a need for a highly specialised expert due to the specification of the transaction.

In conclusion, the technology advancement I find most helpful in my team is cloud-based technology. It has made storing data, providing databases, networking, and software extremely easy. My company is relatively big, and the cloud-based technology has solved its need for a larger storage space for an efficient remote backup solution.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

It is essential to have external lawyers with a high degree of expertise. The external lawyers we engage to defend my company must demonstrate the ability to resolve them.

To achieve this, they must be fully aligned with our policies and principles, which include placing my company, their client, at the centre of their affairs.

They should be more concerned about assuring my company of a premium service and also should be able to establish a long-lasting relationship with my company.

Above all, the most crucial element expected from our external lawyers is their expertise. We rely majorly on the optimum rankings of reputable firms and opinions of other law offices concerning their delivery and experience with an external lawyer before engaging their services.

The involvement of senior lawyers and partners in cases we entrust their law offices to deal with matters a great deal to us.

Law offices must offer prompt feedback on all matters they handle for my office. We expect the external lawyers to take risks as long as it will benefit my company.

It is essential that the external counsel not only understand the values of my company but also that they feel the business and the commercial implications. We expect external lawyers to connect with brand values by developing business strategies and proposing solutions with a rational outlook. They are expected to actively support the business and find creative avenues to reach the intended objective by striking the right balance between the risk to be taken and the outcome obtained.

My company’s main concerns when choosing an external lawyer are the ability to provide prompt feedback and an open mindset that allows an approach close to the business needs.

Technical knowledge and experience are expected. The ability to communicate without losing focus and deliver a thorough legal analysis is greatly appreciated.

Our significant targets when engaging them with the company’s matter are external lawyers willing to take risks with us in high-profile cases.

Finally, we do not have any external lawyer whom we are reconsidering. In all these cases, we value our long-term relationship with many firms who are leaders in their fields, know us, and share our fundamental values.