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Team size: 90
What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?
The imposition of sanctions as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has probably been the most significant single matter the UK team has had to deal with over the past 12 months. As a firm, it has been critical for us to be able to interpret and implement waves of sanctions across many different jurisdictions, under very tight timelines and in a way that was both consistent and worked at an operational as well as an in-principle level. This required a significant effort across our UK team in partnering closely with compliance, risk and business colleagues alike to analyse the scope and breadth of the sanctions and identify compliant solutions, liaise with regulators and sanction authorities, manage risk exposure across all our businesses, and importantly provide support to staff who were affected by the war.
Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?
There are some truly exciting developments in the field of AI that we are working on, both in the business as well as the legal function. For example, we are experimenting with NLP to analyse client terms and to assist the searchability of our document library. We have also partnered with law firms to trial some of the emerging industry analytic and risk identification tools and have created an information exchange with certain leading universities. We believe that to build on this and maximise the benefits AI can bring to our team also requires a focus on concepts of legal design, standardisation and consistent knowledge management. To this end, we have started projects ranging from external consultancy-led sprints looking at the design of our client terms and how we deliver advice, through to participating in industry initiatives on document standardisation and a legal advisory taxonomy.
How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities?
UBS’ aim is to be at forefront of providing ESG-related investment opportunities to clients and move towards making sustainability the standard product offering across the firm. As a legal function we track sustainable finance regulations and guidance with reference to the key themes: disclosure, conduct or risk management and prudential regulation. We have also helped to develop an ESG control framework for assessing and reacting to any potential “greenwashing” risk which may otherwise be associated with these products. The UK legal team has worked with our various businesses in putting together new transactions which provide clients with exposure to ESG-related benchmarks, such as the UBS Climate Aware Index.
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