About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

All companies focus on their profits and I have contributed to my previous company being an originator, covenanter, and operator of a contract with a third party company worth millions of Turkish Lira, all through my efforts.

The most exciting experience of the last two years was playing a major role in my company’s business models, rather than cases, deals and showing the numbers. Being a legal counsel for a consumer finance company who practices in micro-finance areas, a unique example of the market at the time, I had an active role in implementing legislation in different aspects of the business. Together with my business partners, we formed a model of expertise within the Financial Institutions Union for the user-friendly tools that were developed regarding the end user experience.

The most challenging part of the innovative model was to run a development that may reach the ultimate advantage in service, profit and customer journey in a way that it fulfills all necessary regulations and procedures even though they are designed in such a conservative perspective.

What will be the focus for the company in the next 12 months and how do you intend to assist with this?

Taking my career into a new and challenging direction. In terms of insurance law, as a legal counsel in my current company I will assist the organization during its introduction into a new market – health insurance. This will be a journey where I will also be gaining lots of experience and insight, as well through being a member of a young and innovative team that will be creating a new product and sales channel.

My focus will be on all legal work related to documents and forms as well as contract designs with third party operation partners, in addition to all corporate work. Considering new digital technologies and modern approaches in the field, interpreting law and progress in the process development, my main objective will be to take an active role in leading the team rather than being an operational and supportive function.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

Being a corporate in-house lawyer may be a challenge sometimes as it may limit the perspective of our colleagues. Whereas having strong relationships with business partners wide opens a perspective with in different aspects of practice as well as a business wise and strategical methodology together with increasing one’s reputation and impact area.

It also requires an in-house counsel to think and work commercially, but the results are always a win-win for the parties and nurtures the benefits of the company over all. The key point having that for us is to  have a pragmatic look at all the potential issues and what-if scenarios, about the topic raised and being open about all the incomes and risks and stand up using leadership characteristics.

What ‘legal tech’ products do you currently utilize, and do you foresee implementing more of these in the near future?

Becoming more digital is inevitable if you want to make your operations more efficient and save time. Having the online access to my files at the courthouse and being able to manage paperwork from abroad is more than precious. Developments in payment systems and their integration to official legal tools makes it magical in the sense of time effort and speed compared to previous decades.

I currently use a national judiciary informatics system, e-signatures, phone applications synchronising my court dates and follow-ups in the agenda, online legislation and litigation database programmer, legal automation programme to control litigation administration. I always seek new opportunities in sense of getting more automated solutions and monitoring facilities therefore, I am excited what the future holds regarding upcoming technological opportunities.

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

Current judicial and legislative environment in our country could be considered as quite challenging for our profession as we face new important amendments any day. As of 2019, introducing compulsory mediation procedures in commercial cases, data protection law implementations, judicial decisions on escalating claims of surrender and return of the premiums due to economic measures and status are some of the main topics that we as a team focused on.

What do you feel are the most effective techniques for getting the most out of external counsel, in terms of how to instruct them?

Having strong communication and sharing all the necessary information about strategic and administrative decisions affecting the company beforehand is the key to building trust among external counsel. Under the umbrella of strong NDA’s, we act for our external counsel as a part of our team and provide all the support for them. I aim to show empathy in the means or workload and be clear, defined and detailed of our demands, requests and deadlines. Having a well set out code of conduct and consistent manner is a lead for a strong long-term collaboration.