Team size: Two

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

Metro Properties Gayrimenkul Yatırım A.Ş provides project development, asset management, and shopping mall management services. Last year, a regulatory amendment was introduced that prohibited shopping mall management services from collecting any fees generated through their work and instead redirecting payouts from tenants only to retail space investors. This made it seem virtually impossible for shopping mall management companies to survive.

The same amendment regulated the funding of advertising and marketing efforts related to the promotion of retail spaces such that the only ones now allowed to fund or engage in them are investors, not tenants. It is obvious that these regulations will have negative consequences on both the number of visitors to shopping centres and the future of shopping centre marketing teams.

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

In-house lawyers should primarily focus on compliance with the corporate governance and ethical principles that govern the organisation they work for. To this end, they must analyse the impact their organisation has on its immediate environment and aim for transparency with and mutual benefit for the areas and communities of impact. In-house lawyers need to be aligned with corporate management in their understanding that social sensitivities are as important as commercial and managerial competencies.

In-house lawyers should not only know and be able to interpet the law, but should understand how these laws interact with and impact their company’s business strategies. In-house teams should be able to identify reputational risks to the company and work to establish preventative measures. I strongly believe that focusing on corporate sustainability issues will provide opportunities for in-house lawyers to renew their company’s perceptions of driving change and creating value.

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?

When our business colleagues are planning new projects, our legal opinions are required to assess for legal risk and compliance. We have previously outsourced this legal work to external firms due to our heavy workloads, but we successfully divided labour among our team (myself and my paralegal colleague, Seval) to provide high-quality legal research and opinion to company management during a recent project. This was both cost-effective and efficient.