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

Lukoıl-Türkiye is engaged in the projects targeting optimisation and expansion of the station network. As a part of the target, in last two years, it is decided to proceed as one distributor company and terminate the other ones’ license. In order to achieve this goal, LUKOIL was obliged to sign hundreds of agreements and manage it with related administrative bodies within very limited period. Non-stop operation was the key point of transaction. Within one month, all sales team trained, counterparties informed, documentation drafted and over 500 dealer agreements signed and dealers were simultaneously transferred to the other group company. As a result of the project Lukoıl overcame the obstacles together with administrative bodies.

What are the unique challenges, if any, of working in-house for a foreign multinational in Turkey

As known, law drafting is a tool in order to improve the transparency and accountability of a country where investor foresee and make decisions. Within last decade, Turkey has made good development in regulatory environment by restructuring the main laws and law drafting system creates favourable conditions for economic activities. On the contrary, in last years, more than 500 regulation has affected on daily business of oil distributor companies, changed. Some of regulations simultaneously published and entered into force. Some of them are still conflicting with each other.

As an in-house working in one of the dynamic and strictly regulated markets, it is expected to continue in a more stable order. In this respect legislation changes are affecting daily business and you should be faster than the operation in order to comply the business with altered legislation.

What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how does the team intend to assist with this?

2020 is the year of new agreements for oil distribution companies. All team members are targeting fast, duly executed and tailor-made service.  We already established an archive consists of data from court precedents, related regulations and administration of agreements which can be used during the negotiations with dealers. Based on this experience and knowledge, all drafts amended and classified for particular relationships. We believe that if an agreement is not mutually agreed then it will be breached. In this respect we clearly explaining the aim of each article of the agreement to our sales team who will communicate it with counterparties and each member knows that during 2020, legal team is ready to provide full service.

Given that you report directly to Lukoıl’s CEO, why do you think it’s important for heads of legal  to have a close working relationship with their CEO and how does it benefit the company?

As a petroleum market player, you should consider strict regulations in each step of decision making.  Otherwise above from administrative penalties companies may face with misinvesment or lose opportunities in the market. Therefore close working relationship enables data flow which ensures the fully compliant environment for decisions. From scratch to the end, working close with decision makers able us to inform and update them regarding legislation and responsibilities and in return this makes decision makers to have clear and beneficial decisions for the company and save the time. On the other hand operational and market knowledge provides clearer legal opinion rather than the theoretical information.

You mentioned previously how you relocated your legal team to sit closer to your main internal client. Have you been able to further integrate your team into the business since then and how?

If you remove borders, people start better communication. Main task was relocation of legal team to the heart of business where parties could easily understand each others’ workload and expectation. In order to enhance, we started to share important figures such as total collection, hearing lists, total number of lawsuits, closed lawsuits, on the monitor in our department. With this approach colleagues from other departments can daily follow up achievements and workload of the department and legal department can follow-up the tasks and duties easier than before.

You also previously told us how a new software system had assisted you in driving efficiencies in your legal department. Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?

We are already seeing a rise of legal technology companies providing alternative legal services. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain will be tremendous developments for in-house lawyers. AI has already found its way into supporting lawyers and clients alike. As an in-house lawyer, we are daily handling numerous data and if it will be managed by technology means automating manual tasks and helping companies solve some of their business challenges is vast and untapped. Machine learning algorithms in data analysis will be well established practise to help legal counsel maximise efficiencies and reduce cost. Additionally machine learning will enable us to access the latest, most relevant precedents and together with block chain technology it may permit searches that pull data from various systems simultaneously and returning the results in minutes. These technologies will influence tomorrow’s in-house lawyers  in a positive manner, as they will be able to devote their time  towards other, more important issues.