Team size: Seven

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

The challenges that Türkiye and the world are going through have made real estate investments incredibly important, especially in Türkiye. Some of the biggest challenges we faced this year concerned our ability to seize opportunities through swift and meticulous action, working to establish legal basis with haste while minimising risk, and harmonising legal and commercial perspectives in our decision-making.

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

Legal departments should cease to be stand-alone consulting units and work to be fully integrated in all commercial operations of the companies they are a part of. Departments concerned with compliance and ethical practice should be especially intertwined with their in-house legal team. Training should also be a big focus for in-house lawyers, both as it relates to expanding and honing their skillset as well as educating their business partners on how to effectively use their services. The legal team itself should seek to act as a training department for others.

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?

Recently, we worked with the finance department to develop an automated financial risk calculation formula that assesses the current status of case files and outputs provisions to be set aside for the company’s lawsuits. This collaborative effort, executed under my leadership, gave the company the opportunity to effectively and efficiently assess risk without needing to pay for external software or services.