What are the most significant cases or transactions that you have recently been involved in?

Among other projects, the first to mention would be leading Ansell’s ESG Initiatives across Asia-Pacific- Providing legal support in the setting up of Ansell’s new manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu India, worth approximately US$80m, a three-year project designed and built in line with Indian Green Building Council criteria. We have also led similar initiatives across all our manufacturing facilities in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Thailand.

Also, managing the Global Sourcing portfolio from a legal operations perspective. This encompasses hundreds of suppliers across the globe including raw material, chemical and finished goods suppliers. The Supply Contracts which were mostly boilerplate pre-pandemic had to be re-negotiated.

Finally, rolling out new initiatives combatting Forced Labour and more stringent CSR requirements across all Ansell plants, ensuring not only Ansell but all its suppliers adhere to basic International Labour Organisation standards vide redrafting of our Supplier Code of Conduct and securing adherence to the Australian Modern Slavery Act 2018, given Ansell is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Putting in place tracking mechanisms across all Ansell plants in Asia-Pacific and Europe ensuring core components such as overtime, rest days of the employees are carefully tracked.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team? 

I believe the most important technological advancements are related to the fact that in-house counsel are now able to work remotely or even in a hybrid environment. The latter is my present work environment; all I require is a secure internet connection with VPN and a quiet work space, and I am able to put in solid hours into work which would have otherwise been spent on travel. Given my role extends across different regions, a remote meeting is now a mere click away thanks to apps such as Microsoft Teams which is available on both my laptop and mobile phone, paving a huge change to the way I work.

Another technological advancement that the legal team in Ansell rolled out especially during Covid, was the signing of electronic documents–via Docusign and other providers–where contracts, in particular global ones, did not need to be shipped halfway across the world for it to be signed but could now be signed off in a day or within hours depending on all parties’ e-mail access. Whilst the nature of contracts that could be signed electronically is premised upon laws of a country, a large number of jurisdictions allow for this and this has helped save a large amount of expense for the company while mitigating risks from the delay of signing of such documents.