About

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

Trondheim hosts Norway’s university of technology and natural science (NTNU) and as a consequence thereof many exiting technology and IT start-ups as well as some more established technology companies like Powel. The in-house legal market is not very mature and for the moment being most companies do not have their own legal counsel yet. However, it is quite obvious that the need for legal support will increase substantially, as companies who want to access international markets and trade and procure globally are also dependant on protecting their trade secrets or patents, conducting general risk management and also ensure compliance with applicable law and regulations outside Norway. The ever-growing complexity of laws and regulations will require some legal support which is closer to the business with a better in-depth view rather than contacting external lawyers on selected questions only.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

Since IT is an industry under constant development it is of utmost importance to be proactive, close to the business and always alert with regards to upcoming changes, especially to follow up technical developments (such as Software-as-a-Service or AI) and to anticipate what kind of legal challenges those might cause. At the same time it is vital to establish some routines and standard contract terms the business can use as a framework – however, always to be flexible to adapt and modify if business models change or routines and standards for other reasons do not stand the test of reality.

Do you have any effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them?

Quite basic techniques. First of all, it should always be me who contacts the external counsel, at least for the first contact and when it comes to outlining the scope of work as well as our expectations related to such external review. I also want to clarify the commercial terms as early in the process as possible. In addition thereto I try to be very clear when it comes to the content of the review – such as that I do not wish to receive any lengthy legal essay but expect a concise and precise answer to the questions raised. And: that it is always possible to pick up the phone and check if anything of the background information given is missing or unclear.

Have any new laws, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your legal practice?

Yes. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), NIS-directive and the new security law in Norway and Sweden have greatly impacted our business in terms of internal routines as well as how we draft contracts and define the respective risk spheres with our customers.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

It will become a lot easier to find external legal support in regards of more simple or non-recurring questions. A lot of legal platforms have popped up during the last year which try to support finding an external legal support in a certain domain; thus, linking the searcher easier to a reliable source of information. On the other hand this might encourage also non-legal staff trying to solve legal questions in an assumed easy way – which I consider as tricky since the evaluation of a legal issue to a large extent depends on getting the correct and complete facts, to assess those correctly and based upon such analysis, ultimately ask the right questions and also benchmark the answers received properly.

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

External law firms could be more proactive with asking questions in case of uncertainty about the background of a case or facts provided. Moreover, they should always make use of an in-house counsel as a competent dialogue partner and not try to bypass that resource. After all, those two functions should not compete with each other but rather complement one another. Moreover, law firms should improve the transparency of the costs of their services, such as giving a better estimate of hours and costs right at the beginning of a certain mandate so the ultimate costs do not always come as a surprise at the end of the project.

Thought Piece: In-house handling of risk and IP

Both the IT and the energy industry are under constant change. Digitalisation creates a lot of opportunities but also challenges for energy producers, utilities and providers of industrial IT with regards to laws and regulations to comply with, new markets, focus on renewable energies and developments as well as the risk of data breaches or other security risks. The legal risk has increased both for management as well as for companies’ shareholder as the amount of penalties or administrative fines that may be imposed has increased; moreover the risk of data loss and loss of reputation in case of non-compliance, and not to talk about the internal costs of investigating a case and the external legal support required in such case. Thus, in the future it will be of even more importance than today to have a legal support function on board as early as possible, in order to assess risks in advance and to provide the organisation and the executive management with routines and best practices in terms of how to minimise any contractual or other legal risk, and to have functioning systems of security alerts and risk contingency plans which involves the legal team.

Moreover, protection of intellectual property and a strategy on how to use IP in the respective business models without putting ownership to business-critical developments at risk will become more and more of an issue. Here it will become vital to balance customers’ expectations versus good corporate governance.

With regards to both issues a closer correlation between the internal legal support and external law firms will become more and more important, both when it comes to exchanging information about upcoming changes in legislation or technical developments as well as sharing of best practice.