About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

I have worked on the following: negotiated, mitigated and finally settled an environmental spill case among several stakeholders: (landowner, police authorities, the Norwegian Environmental Agency and SAS). I made SAS ready for GDPR as head for the legal project team in Scandinavia, provided legal support (advice, negotiations etc.) in SAS’ IT Next Generation outsourcing project. I provided legal support and preparing litigation (including strategic advice and engaging external counsel a.o.) in the handling of thousands of passenger claims as a result of two week long pilot strike in SAS in multiple (20+) jurisdictions under EU Regulation 261/2004, in unprecedented legal territory. I have provided legal support, guiding and business application ideas in order to meet the Norwegian tax “ban” on loyalty redemption cards and support in sourcing Wi-Fi from satellite providers on SAS’ long haul flights. I have assisted SAS Oil companies and the joint ventures they are a part of diverse infrastructure challenges including disputes, both at infrastructure on airports and at fuel farms.

What can law firms do to improve their services to the legal department?

Increase their focus on client value (instead of delivering a “best legal product”) – customer-centric – and by adopting today’s business mantra “Achieve more with less”. Invest in understanding the client and its business. Be proactive in their assistance, both in advising on risk areas and in solving their clients’ challenges. Law firms should communicate customer targeted know how and legal updates instead of today’s generic newsletters. Furthermore, law firms should and could host and generate networks in order to drive innovation in the legal industry.

The new challenges and roles of legal teams and the advantageous skills of tomorrow’s in-house counsel

Business’ increasing demand for cost reduction is also hitting legal departments and I believe that legal departments will have to focus more on business accountability and cost reduction. This may sound like putting the brakes on legal expenditure only, but it should in fact also entail the ability to hit the gas at the same time. The gas and brake combination can also be described as doing more with less, the business mantra of today. One example to illustrate this is from the legal department’s assistance in contract drafting and negotiations, and how legal could help increasing deal velocity and reducing their own hours, by, for instance, assessing its company’s standard contracts from any recurring time thieves and hold it up against the likelihood of the issue they address ever occurring and the impact should they occur and given that ratio make amendments. If you are always getting in to lengthy discussions with your counterparts around the same paragraph in your standard contract and the matter it addresses is unlikely to ever unfold you should consider redrafting or remove it, and thus expect to pace up your deal velocity and put less of your legal time spent on negotiations with counterparts.

Legal counsel will increasingly be challenged by their organisations in the future, both in regard to the legal opinions they are giving and, on their ability, to be proactive and generate business minded solutions alongside their preventive advice. There will be greater demand on legal counsel to help solve business challenges, and less time spent on work that legal counsel generally think of a as “the best legal product”, in the years to come.

The environment that business’ find themselves in is getting more complex, for example as a result of globalisation, new regulations and regulatory expansion, new technology and environmental concerns. This is surely affecting legal departments. I expect that more and more non-legal roles will be placed on the company’s legal teams, directly or indirectly, including ethical issues, press and media handling, procurement expertise and project and crisis management on top of leading the compliance function and the corporate and secretarial functions.

All the new responsibilities that have or could be put onto the legal department in the years to come is most likely not followed by an equal amount or greater resources, making prioritising even more important for legal counsel. Masters of triage will prevail. 

How to achieve the most in working with external counsel in the future?

There will never be a first-class legal department without a first-class collaboration with external resources. There must of course be a sound partnership that is beneficial for both parties, but this needs to be followed by a true willingness to invest in both teaching and learning from one another, human capital and bucks. To reach full effect there should be a seamless integration of internal and external resources, solving business challenges and not “who does what”.

What will be the advantageous skills for tomorrow’s in-house legal counsel?

My assumption is that there still will be a need for both legal specialists, who first and foremost cover the core risks, and for legal generalists in companies. I believe that counsel that possess both of these skills will prevail. Firstly, because it will enable the necessary flexibility that companies are demanding and secondly it will enhance the legal product as it will more likely bear in mind and cover issues or challenges outside of the specialist topic, as an increasing number of business decisions are interacted and correlated and impact several issues.

Furthermore, I believe that in-house legal counsel will be advising the companies different departments in a greater extent and “moving” more around in their companies, both vertically (from managers to senior vice presidents) and horizontally (between the company’s departments). Putting a demand on legal counsel that possess multidisciplinary skills and disciplines. In addition, to the above-mentioned skills counsel should possess either technical, deep cognitive or analytical skills, the ability to concentrate or social skills.