Team size: Four

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

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) is a very fast and living sector where changes occur constantly. As a result of this we have to monitor all new laws and regulations and focus on our compliance processes closely.

As a company part of the FMCG market, we had to revise and control all our compliance processes according to new changes. In this regard, we had to initiate certain compliance projects in terms of competition, data privacy, ethics, etc., by issuing and declaring new policies and procedures. Due to the extensive regional working area of UNO and various business models, it took us immense effort to have the outcomes of such projects implemented within the company by training our employees and establishing disciplinary procedures. But we have managed to complete all necessary actions regarding not only local regulations but best-market practices.

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

First, in-house legal teams provide business-friendly legal support. They should know the financial situation, market shares and targets of the company. Indeed, it is not enough to have a good legal background for being a successful in-house lawyer. It is a big necessity to understand company’s targets and analyse the legal processes according to the business model.

Furthermore, Türkiye aligns its legislation with European Economic Area and in this regard rapidly amends its regulations. Especially governmental monitoring on retail market triggers daily legislative amendments in this area.

To ensure that their respective entities are acting in line with applicable legislation, in-house lawyers should be all eyes in terms of new regulations and precedents of governmental bodies. However, acknowledging such developments in the legal area is merely sufficient as internal organisations and business models should be aligned with requirements of such regulations. In this regard, in-house lawyers should focus on conducting compliance procedures in various areas including competition, protection of personal data, anti-corruption and ethics by issuing, declaring and implementing written policies and procedures, training their respective employees and taking internal actions in case of violation of such procedures.

To sum up, in-house lawyers should take prompt actions to ensure their entities’ compliance with newly introduced or amended regulations, especially those who are operating in retail sector as it is a rapidly changing area.

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?

In Türkiye, it is usual for companies to take part in a lot of execution and court proceedings, especially if such companies operate in various geographical regions and in retail sector. When it comes to following these proceedings and reporting them on an executional level, it results in dealing with huge volume of paperwork and creates an extreme workload. Additionally, operating all around the country creates a need of coworking with external counsels from different regions, especially in terms of attending hearings or running domestic errands.

As UNO’s legal team, we have been suffering from these troubles for a certain time and thus, we had to come up with a new solution. So, we worked with a software service provider to create a tailor-made programme that serves all our needs and have our provider code a software for us. The most highlighted advantage of this software is the terms of our understanding with the service provider; as UNO we can upgrade the software in line with our needs by instructing the service provider on a timely basis.

Thanks to the newly created software we can monitor our expenses and fees, the deadlines of legal letters, notices, warnings and the hearing dates. Also, we created an access mechanism for our external counsels around the country and they can directly report us the ongoing matters regarding our legal works. The improvement in reporting system helped the company spare a respected workload and helps us to focus on other areas. The software also serves us as a digital archive, which is essential, considering recent technological developments.

Additionally, companies may suffer from independent actions of various departments, in terms of concluding agreements with vendors, suppliers and customers, time to time. As a feature of our software, departments such as procurement, sales, marketing, etc., must submit the draft contracts to attention of our legal team prior to signing, since the software generates a contract number, and it is not possible for other departments to proceed without said number mechanism.

Due to this innovative action, our legal team have preserved our company to suffer from a remarkable loss including the contracts concluded without executional or legal approval, missing the deadlines for notices or legal letters.