Team size: Ten

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

For the APAC region, my team takes care of all legal concerns, including client contracts, data privacy, litigation management, compliance, and employment relations. Globally, my team takes care of negotiating agreements with vendors, including third party data, SaaS, professional services, cloud service providers, and marketing services. Recently, we closed a sales deal with a global institutional investment manager where FactSet was engaged to provide a performance measurement, attribution solution, and professional services. My team also initiated the evaluation of our agreements with major service providers, to determine the level of data privacy compliance and the remediation of any gaps, given the new and emerging requirements in the region. Lastly, my team led the negotiation of the renewal of our agreement with a major cloud services provider. Due to the increased business, we were providing the provider, we were able to secure favourable terms on information security covenants and an increase on the liability cap.

As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

A legal team needs to partner with the business, so the ability to build trust is essential. This means that one needs to be strong in communicating and collaborating, with people at all levels, teams, and global borders. Advice needs to solution-oriented, timely, and grounded in integrity. This also means being acutely aware of business needs and the conversation in the industry and with regulators.

Because of the fast-changing landscape of business, a legal team needs to be comfortable learning new subject matter quickly and make decisions in an uncertain environment.

Building a team is essential. Each member of the team has to be aware of the business goals and the legal team’s part in bringing about these goals. Each must be an expert in one’s particular workflow but also needs to know enough about other parts of the legal team’s work, so that the team can uncover legal risk and respond to emergencies quickly.

What diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have you and your legal department been championing within your company’s endeavours?

Many senior members of the legal team have taken roles in business resource groups (BRG) within the company that mean the most to them. Personally, I am serving as co-chair of the families BRG. My work in the BRG allows me to bring to the conversation the needs of employees whose family obligations prevent them from giving their best to their roles, and my conversations with the company’s DE&I council allows me to surface these needs to the FactSet’s senior leadership, so we can explore potential solutions.

Recently, the BRG organised a training on helping one’s family cope with workplace change and the anxiety that this brings about, to the employee and their families. We are planning further activities that have a focus on family obligations. I am re-acquainting myself with wills, successions, and trusts (honestly, not part of my day-to-day contract negotiation practice!), in order to conduct an informational seminar on estate planning. In partnership with the Pride BRG, we are planning a version of this same training for LGBTQIA+ families.