About

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

We have been leading the Daimler’s global restructuring project so called “the Project Future” within Turkey that contains spin-off of the Passenger Car divisions from Commercial Vehicles (Trucks & Buses).  In the Spring of 2019, the first preparatory measures were initiated to transform the current divisions Cars and Vans, as well as Trucks and Buses, into legally independent entities. Under the new structure Company plans to give its divisions greater entrepreneurial freedom, position them even closer to their markets and customers, while empowering them to enter partnerships more easily and quickly.

The most comprehensive due diligence in Company’s -52 year corporate history has been undertaken in this context. In addition to intensive legal work on re-structuring the corporate governance model of the entity, we as legal team was also at the driver seat in this entity wide project. It was a challenge to re-shape a company while not jeopardisng its momentum on daily production, retail business and customs procedures at the same time ensuring the working peace of the community that consists more than 7000 employees in addition to its dealers.

Can you explain the challenges you face in accommodating the rapid digitalisation of the automotive industry in Mercedes-Benz Türk and how you overcome these?

The automotive industry is currently facing a rapid change.  We are developing from a car maker company to a mobility service provider. Due to rapid change in automotive industry, new legal issues arise throughout the entire company and they are of even greater importance for new business areas. E-commerce and telecommunication laws are new legal fields that we add to our daily knowledge on top of the data protection compliance.  We as a team never did before have to deal with as many projects simultaneously as we do today. I believe the backbone to overcome new challenges relies on having a genuine understanding of the core business of the company with a sense of commercial awareness.

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

Due to rapid change in automotive industry, telecommunication regulations and Turkish Telecommunication Authority’s recent decisions have huge impact on mobility solutions and connectivity business. On top of the new regulations, there are slight changes between EU and local regulations, that causes big interpretation changes by the official bodies. Different applications of law between EU and local practice also force us as local legal team to be more creative and pragmatic while ensuring the local legal compliance and at the same time not deviating from the global design.

When we spoke to you  last year, you had recently hired a number of new staff to the legal team. What are the most important considerations you have when recruiting new team members?

Our team is serving with a holistic approach for legal, compliance and external affairs issues in a volatile and unpredictable market. No doubt to say that in addition to certain know-how, solidarity, being resilient, relying and understanding one another and commitment to team success are the prominent considerations while recruiting new team members.

What “legal tech” products does the team utilise? What is useful about the products and could they be improved?

We have been implemented digital workflows for contract drafting and digital litigation reporting systems for a time ago. In addition we had the chance to enjoy e-discovery software. Identifying big amounts of data by e-discovery tool provides enormous efficiency especially in audit proceedings.  However, mature contract review or judicial decision tools in Turkish law have not been served in Turkish market yet. I believe these two areas are the biggest improvement area.

What can law firms in turkey do to improve their services to their corporate clients?

Law firms can also take active part in legal technology providers market. At first, legal tech had been driven by IT service providers by just modifying their current systems. However, it is seen especially on overseas market that an increased number of lawyers launch their own legal tech startups since legal tech needs both know-how in IT and legal fields. Therefore, my expectation would be to take active part in shaping legal tech world and deliver solutions tailored to the needs of inhouse teams. The infamous one-size-fits-all generic solutions provided by law firms will not meet the requirement very soon.

FOCUS ON: The next generation of In-house counsel

No doubt to say that the “old-school counsel” sitting alone in his or her castle and editing contracts should not exist any longer. It has changed long time ago that we as legal counsel are not called after something bad happens when it was too late. In today’s business culture,  we are one of the core team member of the business projects at the design phase.

The way of producing and distributing is currently facing a change of paradigm. Many manufacturer evolve to service providers. This involves rather radical changes in daily legal work flows, and expectations. Being pragmatic and agile are utmost crucial factors to achieve success, as a legal counsel in order to sustain efficient legal risk management and contribute to you own company’s success. We as legal counsel have to react fast and develop the appropriate swift solutions together with business teams.

A decade ago, none of general counsel were thinking to provide instant legal feedback and legal solutions in case of a hit of negative social media against to his or her company. Providing fast and flexible legal solution is the biggest expectation in today’s era.

In addition, digitalisation also brings additional regulatory fields like data protection. Undeniably, a step ahead must be taken from only complying with the regulatory requirements. We as legal counsel should also set target for ourselves to contribute into business.

Due to this wide range of topics and the complex dynamics of digitalisation, it is no longer sufficient to be only a good lawyer.  Legal counsel should be also transformed to business enablers while serving with tech solutions.