I enjoy the most when the journey has some surprises, thrilling moments adding excitement and learning and I must admit that my role in SAP as General Counsel has all these elements and more that fills my morning with enthusiasm, and I look forward to every single day. SAP, as most of you would already know, is a large customer centric Software company that has been at the heart of many thriving businesses. I am part of the market unit leadership team and therefore, in addition to the routine legal function of the inhouse legal team, there is an added responsibility to help our customers succeed and therefore to offer legally compliant solutions for many customer issues. In the simple words, the expectation is be the trusted advisor and business partner while being the conscious keeper.
The mandate is broad and includes transaction support, advice and guidance to the management and senior leadership on business challenges, employment law matters, statutory compliances, aspects related to regulatory implications including data privacy, risk and dispute management, driving initiatives on simplification / standardization to be agile, managing the legal & secretarial team, collaborating with the internal stakeholders to provide them with the best legal service etc.
My journey in the role of General Counsel role so far has been very interesting. I was in SAP in a different role within the legal team before I got elevated and therefore was very well familiar with the organization, my stakeholders, the challenges that may come up and the network of people – both internally and externally I may be able to lean on. During this journey, I had excellent opportunities to work on the most complex issues with some fantastic colleagues across the globe that resulted in great learnings, some stressful moments of closing difficult transactions on win-win terms followed by fantastic wins. There were many changes in the external environment and in the regulatory space that impacted us as a business and maneuvering and navigating through these challenges was interesting. The best part of working in large organization is the pool of experts that can be approached, and you know you are not going wrong. One key learning from this journey is that how collaboration brings out the best result. I have also been very fortunate to work under fantastic leader, my manager, who leads by examples, empowers you, guides you and supports you and to have a team that is so dependable and self-motivated. This journey is travelled with the fantastic colleagues in the legal team and traveling together made it so beautiful than just the work.
The role of General Counsel is absolutely evolving. Unlike the traditional times where an in-house legal team would generally support in drafting / negotiating a contract or provide the background documents to law firm to support litigations, the roles in the current times have expectations of being business advisors and partners. We are seeing that the businesses are becoming more complex, time is of great essence and therefore all the decisions are made swiftly, we operate in a very different era vis-a-vis the traditional manufacturing or the trading houses. In today’s world, every decision has varied degree of impact on the top line and the bottom line. Today, a general counsel is expected to have a detailed discussion if a provision is required for a contingent liability or if a transaction is classified as related party and thus attracting the additional governance around it, topics like conflict of interest, competition aspects, impact on the business due to change in legislature or regulatory compliances, challenges arising from noncompete in hiring and retaining the best talents in days of innovation and disruption specially for senior leadership; how do you balance and maximize the value of intellectual properties – what patents you hold and what you let go. And most of the time, apart from the routine business, invariably there is a larger project in parallel that demands enough and more attention – it could be a new acquisition or integration or partnering on a large change management or restructuring and to top it, everything needs to be done ‘now’.
The most important aspect that personally appeals to me is that the General Counsel is the conscious keeper of the organization, the business will look upon to this role to do the right things and to mitigate the risks. This is a position is of trust, ethics and integrity and its equally important to remain balanced, unbiased and focused on the thought of doing the right thing for the organization in full compliance of letters and spirit.
Like mentioned before, the businesses are constantly evolving, and it is essential to match the pace. The key challenge across sector is to stay relevant with your own skill set; to understand the environment of the business and to keep abreast of all the regulatory/legislative changes that are happening and its impact. The other omnipresent challenge is that there is digitization and therefore the problem is not just simple of understanding the law and its impact, it is working with the technology teams to ensure that we are able to translate the expectations to them to seek the benefit of scale and have systems and processes that help stay compliant. Selecting the right technology that will be scalable, adaptable and compatible will help in the long run.
Law firms are the integral part of the eco-system that makes a General Counsel more efficient and effective and hence this synergy is very important. A counsel feels more comfortable working with the firm that understands the business its challenges to ensure that the advice or the opinion is relevant. Therefore, while it is important for the firm to learn the business, it is equally important for the counsel to be transparent and share the knowledge of the industry. Availability of the required expert assistance at the time of need will come only when there is sufficient investment from both in relationship and knowledge sharing. With such partnership, the law firms are fully prepared to be the much-needed extended team and bridge the gap of additional bandwidth specially during heavy lifting phases and simultaneously be a guiding voice. The key words are expertise, availability and affordability in the same order of priority.
I don’t think anything can substitute for reading. Be it electronic or on-line tools or physical books / articles. Continuous learning is easier these days then before because of the thousands of options that are available right from taking an online crash course on a topic to using the technology that shares the continuous updates on the changes in legislature and the evolving jurisprudence around a topic to reading an online article on a new discussion point or even attending classes where you not only gain knowledge but also expand your network of people who could be interested in the same topic and therefore provide a form to exchange thoughts. While the options are plenty the challenge is to find the time and the other bigger challenge is to identify the right content that covers all the necessary information that is required.
These days when I speak to youngsters, I am so energized by their clarity of thoughts, of what they want to specialize in and how they are willing to balance their professional ambitions in addition to their passions. They are much brighter then probably what I was their age. They know how to leverage technology better and therefore work smarter than harder.
In-house roles are more of all rounded skill set and while there can be options to be an expert in one area, it certainly helps if one is more open to work on multiple areas. I personally believe its best to work on all areas and determine for yourself as to what you love pursing rather than being rigid of what you want even before you have explored everything. Being flexible only opens up more opportunities. A lot of the younger professional experts find it more fascinating to work in a law firm than explore opportunities in-house often with an assumption that in a law firm you can do a lot more. I personally believe that if you have the right attitude to learn and to work with integrity, you will do well wherever you go and in which ever field you work. I would also recommend investing continuously on upskilling as these days knowledge of just one area is not sufficient.
Gadget – My iPhone
App – WhatsApp and Google Maps
Automobile Brand – BMW
Writing Instrument – A Sheaffer ink pen
Holiday Destination – Scotland
Cuisine – Mexican
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