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

As the digital evolution will release the legal departments from a lot of traditional paper work, we need to redefine the role and find a new way to add value to the business. Instead of being administrative, one can be strategic. Instead of case oriented, one can be conceptual. As the digitalisation of the markets will require new business concepts, the in-house lawyer will need to establish the legal frame work for such concepts and ensure that they are within the relevant regulations. This will require a creative mind set, understanding of new technology and at the same time a broad knowledge of the relevant legal requirements (such as GDPR, cyber security, antitrust etc.)

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

If you are not able to communicate with your business, you will be lost. Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating – the skill is to make yourself understood. Also, you need to understand how your knowledge and competence can create value for the business you are supporting. If you sit around and wait for the business to come to you, you’ve already lost. This means that you also need to understand the business, their challenges and opportunities and follow them in their development. Such knowledge can be about the product or solution the business is selling, or about financial challenges and business concepts. Sometimes I think lawyers just assume to have the answer and talk too much in order to convince everyone else that we’re right. What we really need to do is to find the right questions and really listen to the answer.

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

This is a challenge as I often experience that the external counsel don’t understand my role in the company, what kind of advice I need from them and what kind of advice our European management expect from the external counsel. Since I’m a lawyer procuring legal service from other lawyers, sometimes it feels like I’m getting advice from a colleague where I have to provide my own assessment to their conclusion.  My personal experience is that I need to ask the external lawyer to understand my role in the company and advise as an in-house lawyer would. This is not an easy task ad it require that the external counsel is willing to spend some time understanding the company, decision structure and how the advisory role in-house is different from external.

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

The new national security act with its comprehensive approach to the integration of cyber, physical, information, personnel and other security aspects and the increased awareness that public infrastructure needs sufficient protection against any form of terrorist attack and other breach of security. As a company that is a big supplier of public transport solutions, including cloud solutions, we are of course affected by this. Also, the Public Procurement Act has for several years limited our possibilities to affect or negotiate the contract terms of the procurements. This has been more of a gradual transition, but if you see over the last decade, the procurement process has completely changed.

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

The possibilities within artificial intelligence. As part of a multinational company, we have extensive approval processes in place for risk elements in our offers. An important part of the sales phase is of course to analyse and identify the risk elements in the contract, including legal risks. To a large degree, when standard contracts are used for standardised deliveries, it should be possible to utilise artificial intelligence technology to analyse and identify the risk elements such that it can be presented and released by the relevant management without the involvement of the legal department.

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

The same as always – be able and willing to give clear advice. When we go to an external law firm, it’s normally because we are insecure about the relevant regulations or our own initial assessment. Normally such questions are related to a specialist area where it would be too time consuming to fully investigate by ourselves. When we get the legal advice we need it to be clear. The conclusion can of course be unknown, but we would still want clear advice. It is surprising how often we get long deliberations over a topic without any conclusion or advice. This is frustrating – as lawyers we are also capable to point to the uncertainties. What we pay the external lawyer for is the advice.