Could you, please, tell us a bit about yourself and your role? 

My name is Sorina Ilie, and I am currently the head of the legal department in Agrana Romania, part of the Agrana group, a well-known European sugar producer and an international top producer of fruit preparation and fruit concentrate.  

In Romania, Agrana is the most important sugar producer, with two active factories in Roman (refining raw sugar and sugar beet) and Buzau (only raw sugar refining). Its products: Coronita and Margaritar sugar are notorious brands consumers prefer for their quality.  

I graduated from the Law Faculty of the University of Bucharest and have two Master’s Degrees in Business Management from the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, respectively Conflicts mediation from Titulescu University.  

I have 21 years of experience in the legal field. After dedicating more than a decade mainly to litigation activity, I changed to consultancy in 2014, when I became Head of Legal in Agrana Romania.  

In my current role, I work closely with the Board of Management of the Company coordinating the counselling activity of Agrana Romania’s Legal department to ensure the company’s compliance with the legislation and its bylaws, providing legal support in a broad line of areas: from corporate topics, mergers, companies dissolution, due diligences, contracting activity, compliance and antitrust law, to labour law – either for reorganizational processes of the companies units, collective labour agreement, unions relationship – to intellectual property and more. I am also responsible for the coordination and leading of the cases in front of all Romanian courts or arbitral courts.  

I believe that an excellent in-house counsel, whether he is a lawyer or legal adviser, needs to have good knowledge and expertise in both areas, litigation and consultancy, as the litigation area provides you with a clear image of the consequences of not securing all legal risks properly, while the consultancy part, gives you the proper ‘tools’ to prevent such risks from happening and ensure the compliance of the company’s activity, while opening constantly new possibilities to develop as a professional.  

Also, as an in-house counsel, you have the advantage of better knowing your client (the company) and its departments – which are your internal customers; hence, you have a better understanding of their needs and, therefore, the opportunity to tailor your advising to the maximum extent.In the world that we are part of, where the development of new technologies (either if is referring to contract drafting, case management, legislative and case law research, machine learning etc) and digitalization, will continue to redefine the legal assistance activity, the in house lawyer’s role will continue to remain a key one in the company’s activity. His close connection to all core departments of the company, his streamlined activity due to the above, will allow the inhouse lawyer to focus more on the creative side of this activity, which is actually what I like the most about my profession and makes (for now) the difference between human and AI in this field.