Team size: Eight

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

As an alcoholic beverage company, we conduct business in a highly regulated sector adhering to strict rules and regulations, leading us to perform robust and effective risk management without interrupting the business. As such, the biggest challenge that my team and I faced last year was the investigation conducted by the Turkish Competition Authority. We have a robust, comprehensive and effective compliance programme focusing on competition and antitrust compliance. We were confident before the Turkish Competition Authority while explaining and defending our acts and practices.

After enduring and devoted work, we have concluded the investigation with commitment without any fine or finding of violation thanks to our great effort in establishing an effective and robust competition compliance programme since 2016. Notably, the Turkish Competition Authority closed the investigation acknowledging our dedication to full compliance while carrying out business.

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

As the in-house counsel has become more of a business partner who gets involved in supporting and navigating complex decisions, they are expected to be commercial advisors and a strategic thinker to help shape and deliver corporate reputation and strategies. To embrace this new role, in-house lawyers should have excellent commercial acumen, stay very close to the business and have a good understanding of technology, mastering it rapidly; they need to become digitally savvy to keep pace with their business partners.

Digitalisation will bring inevitable benefits for in-house counsel eliminating tedious, time-consuming and manual projects by enabling them to do cutting-edge work. As such, this transformation will eventually lead the in-house counsel to spend adequate time on more strategic matters for the company. Indeed, incorporating technology into in-house practices will keep booming as millennial legal professionals are looking for tech-friendly organisations enabling them to use efficient tools while working in the legal department of the companies. The technology would ensure easy monitoring of the risk exposure, cases and issues that the company is dealing with and provide better tools to make appropriate and timely risk assessments.

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?

Mey Diageo legal acts as the first point of contact when a customer complaint is received through various means of communication as we adopt zero risk policy while operating. As such, we partnered closely with our IT, sales and quality teams to establish a time-saving, well-designed, user-friendly internal system to scrutinise and monitor customer complaints.

Instead of manual follow-up and classification, the legal team has resolved the matter by introducing an internal solution-technology-based innovation.