Team size: Three

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

Akkim has group companies inside and outside Türkiye. Thus, it would be said that I am serving to a group of companies inside and outside Türkiye which are the subsidiaries of Akkim. I am also the board member of some of these subsidiaries outside Türkiye (e.g. Spain, Germany, USA etc.). When I first started at Akkim 5 years ago, there was no legal department established before me. Thus, I would say that the main challenge for me was to create the team, systems, procedures and make the department a processing one, in line with business and acting like a reputable intentional law firm to be able render niche and updated services. I believe, with the business experience that I have had over the past 22 years, I have succeeded what I have planned for AKKİM.

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

To keep the qualified people at our teams would be one of the biggest challenges. Keeping them in the team requires a serious effort for supporting their personal developments and carrier path. Also, to be a distinguished service provider as an inhouse lawyer, I believe being updated, business oriented and having the capacity to be the part of the strategy and innovation would be counted as the other biggest challenges.

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?

We are rendering the basic and important educations to our staff to create an awareness on some critical legal issues like competition law, corporate law, and so on. We even prepared simulations regarding investigations of governmental authorities, by our own sources, without having outsource consultants. With all the work we have done so far and those follow ups made with our teams, we even won a case and took a serious amount of a penalty back from the treasury that has been paid by our company.