What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

I would say the overall management of the legal and compliance risks in a post-pandemic business environment with the addition of the global inflation crisis has been the overarching challenge for the past year as these external factors have made it more difficult to navigate all the relevant requirements and safeguard the company in these tumultuous times.

In your opinion, what areas should in-house lawyers focus on over the next few years to prove value to their organisations in Türkiye?

I would say that the “value generating” aspect of an in-house counsel can only be organically understood by the company via (i) effective integration into daily business decision matrixes and (ii) an increase in the counsel’s visibility throughout the organisation. In order to focus on these two issues, all in-house counsel must be effective and sincere communicators. This brings us to the core challenge of a properly working inter-company or inter-departmental communication for the legal department. The tackling of this core challenge, in my opinion, should be the core issue to focus on for all in-house counsel.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

The extended utilisation of new digital and legally valid methods of legal correspondence could be a prime example for such an action. It has been some time since we started to use the “registered electronic e-mail” (KEP) system, but nowadays we are utilising this system for all areas of legal requirement ranging from communication with courts and prosecutors offices to serving of notification and declarations and even contracts to business partners.