About

‘The legal team’s vision is that we shall make ourselves redundant in the long-term. What we aim to achieve with this vision is to always try to focus our resources and efforts in such way that we build a long-lasting value for the company. In other words, we should always strive to focus on creating business driven standard legal documentation, guidelines and processes, and couple this with adequate and continuous training of the organisation, thereby building such a strong legal integrity and skill within the business so that in the long-term the business will not need any day-to-day support from the legal team. That’s how we best create long-lasting value for the company’, states Andreas Mattsson, general counsel of renewable packaging material provider BillerudKorsnäs when describing the culture of the legal team he leads. Five lawyers, one corporate compliance officer and one support staff member make up the team, and Mattsson operates in a leadership role as well as working with corporate governance matters, serves as secretary on the board of directors, works with group related M&A and is a member of the group’s executive leadership team. He explains that the corporate legal counsels within the department provide support to different parts of the organisation, and include specialists in certain legal fields on which they provide advice throughout the group. Matching the company’s reach, the team’s support extends far beyond Sweden, providing ‘global support, while the US corporate legal counsel provides support in the US and in some business related to Asia’. In addition to its strictly legal remit, the team is at the forefront of several initiatives, including the Group’s programme for responsible business, including anti-corruption, trade compliance and fair competition, which is led by a Swedish-based corporate compliance manager. Recognising the benefit of having a well-resourced and highly capable legal function, the business has overseen the function ‘grow rapidly during the last years, considering that we only consisted of one person four years ago. We are now at a decent size, but will likely increase with one additional lawyer within the next year’, Mattsson says. Speaking to the team’s immense all round ability and talent, he comments that it is ‘an absolutely fantastic team where it is impossible to single out any one individual for special recognition; everyone in the team is critically important for success’.