About

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

The in-house legal role has undergone a huge change over the past years with the demand on the position to be more commercial while at the same time seeing stricter compliance regulations and pressure on the legal counsels to make sure the organisation is in full compliance. In a global organisation this is even more critical as the legal department has not only one jurisdiction to overlook, but the whole world. The good side of that is, of course, that the organisation sees the need of involving counsel at a very early stage of all projects, as compliance diligence is an important factor in any transaction. The pressure on counsel to be more commercial is a change, but I think it is a good one. The best counsel need to understand the business to the bone to be able to provide the best legal advises.

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

Instructing external counsel is sometimes tricky as they do not necessary understand the business – hence the advices we get sometimes tend to not take all “factors” into consideration. I therefore am a great believer in creating strong relationships with the counsel we use, making sure to give them necessary background information and relevant information about the organisation. Furthermore, I think it is good to be closely involved and create and open and trustful communication platform. Meaning, it can be easy for both us and the counsels to pick up the phone and a question. I believe we should avoid too many formal emails when we can solve it with a quick phone call. We all get too many emails every day. There are no stupid questions – all questions should be raised. We also have great success having had external counsels on secondment with us. We think that is fruitful, as once they return back “home” it will be easy for us to work with them because they will now have a unique understanding of the business and the people working here.

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

Unfortunately we have had some compliance issues, which is natural in a global shipping business; that has had great impact on the way we work. The legal department can never stop working with compliance and we need to constantly evolve, teach and make sure we are in compliance at all times. We need to understand that it is our responsibility to make appropriate compliance programs and to follow up accordingly and actively. At the same time it is indeed on the organisation to make sure to follow up – that is their responsibility. In this light, it is also very important that the legal department has a very good communication with management and the board – to make sure that the tone from the top is set. For us, we are very lucky in that term, as we have a management and board with great focus on these issues.

FOCUS ON

Diversity from an in-house legal department perspective.

At Wallenius Wilhelmsen, we want to define logistics for a world in motion. The world is changing at a rapid pace, and a diverse work force is an essential enabler to survive in these waters. To get access to high competence and to be able to fulfil our goals, we therefore need to focus on what makes us better and agile. In our company, diversity in the workplace means having access to the best talents, across ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation. Thus, we focus on hiring people from different cultures, viewpoints, backgrounds, and personalities for our teams. For the legal team, we also must think about what we can do to make sure external law firms provide us with diverse teams. Unfortunately, many external law firms still struggle to deliver diversity. We meet a lot of men in their late 50’s and struggle to find female partners and younger talents with different cultural backgrounds. This is a problem, not because white men in their late 50’s are not good lawyers, but because we believe a mix of backgrounds will give us even better advice. External law firms seem increasingly aware, but struggle to deliver as they still operate in traditional ways that do not necessarily attract diversity. Being a substantial purchaser of legal services, we have an obligation to drive change, increasingly demanding that law firms take a proactive approach to diversity and inclusion and holding them accountable if they fall short. When appointing law firms or adding law firms to our panels, we can make sure to ask for a diverse team. If the law firm cannot fulfil that request, we should either not appoint them or be presented a plan for improvement. We pay a high price for legal services, and we have a right to demand what is best for our needs. We know for a fact in 2019 law schools in Norway (and probably in other countries as well) educate more women than men. This has been the case for years – but is not in any way reflected in major law firms where the percentage of female partners is still is less than 10%. Having the pleasure of working in shipping, an industry which also traditionally is “male dominated,” I have learned that law firms are even less diverse. It is sad to see, and I really hope law firms can start to reflect the diversity we see in other parts of today’s society. It is possible, and I think we all are ready to put an end to the arguments that women don’t really want careers, or that law firms don’t have access to different ethnicities. It is not like that. End of story. I also think we should stop worrying too much if the law firms become diverse because clients demand it, or if clients make such demands only as law firms emphasise the legal significance of diversifying? Stop procrastinating, and just make the change. It will benefit us all.