Team size: 30

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

In-house lawyers face the challenges their companies face. Migros and other supermarkets worldwide faced several challenges posed by the pandemic. In Türkiye, the scrutiny of governmental organisations on FMCG and supermarket sectors heightened, extending to market players. This culminated in more investigations, audits, controls, and new legislation such as amendments on retail trade law. Furthermore, in-house lawyers faced an increased workload of governmental affairs and defence related tasks. My team and I managed to overcome these obstacles – an accomplishment I am proud of.

Beside these challenges, Migros set out to become the most valuable retail company in Türkiye, extending its operations from retail to e-money, media, delivery solutions and online trade. Hence, our challenges are mostly based on Migros’ upgrowth appetite and the legal operations of the interconnected subsidiaries. In-house lawyers must prioritise their company’s benefits; it can be therefore confusing when the benefits of the company’s conflict with the needs of its subsidiaries.

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 operations do not get the technological support they deserve. This may be because lawyers are mostly partial to traditional methods. This is something we must overcome, to automate routine work and devote valuable time to other endeavours.

The legal profession involves carrying out a lot of repeat tasks that occupy time that can otherwise be used to develop new ideas and learn new skills, among others. I believe a lawyer’s time is too valuable carry out tasks that can be automated.

Businesspeople favour in-house lawyers that possess business acumen; the deeper your knowledge of sector and business flow, the better the legal solutions you create. However, business knowledge is not taught by law schools, and is instead, learned in the role. We live in a technology-driven world, so we can use it in our favour to make time to develop these qualities.

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 recently started using a tailor-made application after almost one year of testing and adapting it to our team’s needs. Our objective was to save the lawyers’ valuable time, which could instead, be devoted to developing their knowledge and experience.

This application provides Migros lawyers a list of their cases, interlinked with UYAP. UYAP notification updates (such as a new petition submitted to one of the cases) pop-up to the relevant lawyer’s window. This saves time used to frequently check on UYAP, and the lawyer does not have to manually keep track of new notifications. Also, all documents are saved online, stored in a database accessible to all lawyers.