Team size: eight

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

The number one challenge has been making the legal department a major business stakeholder. The departments that are tasked to implement the core of the business (such as marketing, operations, and strategy) may avoid legal involvement until a very late stage, when it is very difficult for the legal team to contribute. This is still a challenge, but like many of my colleagues I actively work in a way that endeavours to include myself and team in every step of a project.

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

Like many other companies around the world, we need to adopt to the new world. I believe the two major areas that need improvement are digitalisation, and effectiveness of compliance. Companies are making internal changes to suit and adapt to the new digital world. Legal and compliance plays an important role in this transformation. Also, legal department(s) need to take actions to digitalise itself. Regarding compliance, there is still room for the companies to understand its importance and incorporate it into their business DNA. Companies are now aware that it is very easy to lose the reputation that they have spent years to build, with one misstep.

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?

I believe the biggest achievement that I made in all the roles that I took over the years is to automate or digitalise the works conducted by the department by organising the past works and assigning it to team members. To achieve this, I always work very closely with IT departments. Due to its nature, compliance works can be very easily automated with certain algorithms and consequently map related risks and highlight actions to be taken.