Brenda Hansen began her career as a paralegal before joining a multinational biotech company as a Chief Compliance and Legal Operations Officer, where she worked for nearly 11 years. Brenda is now a Senior Legal Operations Consultant at UpLevel Ops, a Brightflag partner, focusing on how to make lasting changes in legal operations. This is a subject that she is particularly qualified to talk about. *Winner of the FT Innovative Lawyers Award 2022 in the category “Asia-Pacific Most Innovative In-House Legal Team”; The other organizations are listed alphabetically CIMB Group, the Malaysian bank`s legal team, has developed technology that uses machine learning and robotic process automation to assess millions of alerts for transactions that could conflict with anti-money laundering rules. The tool can handle the majority of non-complex alerts without human intervention and collects valuable data to track risky trade trends. With this in mind, Mason and his team worked to transform knowledge management in McKinsey`s legal department. However, Mason also faced a challenge that will be familiar to most legal organizations: how do you use your knowledge to achieve overarching goals such as efficiency and accessibility when expertise is so often in the minds of individual practitioners? In an environment like McKinsey, this challenge has been divided into two subtasks. On the one hand, the legal department had to serve McKinsey`s “internal” clients and stakeholders, primarily consultants who often seek contractual advice because of their consulting activity. On the other hand, it was also important to optimise knowledge management within the legal department itself to ensure that lawyers and lawyers could access the knowledge they need and apply it as effectively as possible for their work.
The legal team launched an “inclusion challenge” with a series of videos, questions and follow-up discussions to better understand a range of issues related to diversity and inclusion and to strengthen engagement within the team after the pandemic began. The team used change management software that uses neuroscience principles to drive behavior change and is used by Accenture with its external clients. Nearly 1,000 lawyers participated, and the program increased participation in other initiatives such as Accenture`s LGBT+ Ally program. Stéphanie Hamon has spent her entire career repositioning relationships around the legal field, first in client relations and business development at Am Law Global 200 law firms, then as Chief Commercial Officer for one of the world`s largest banks, and now as Head of Legal Operations Advisory for Norton Rose Fulbright. Member of the Am Law 100 and partner of Brightflag. Many of the in-house professionals highlighted in this FT Innovative Lawyers Asia-Pacific report have made significant business and legal contributions to the success of their businesses. This reflects how they are increasingly valued as management consultants. Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan`s largest trading house, has set up a working group to review and lead the implementation of new legal technologies. A first objective was set on the introduction of knowledge sharing tools within a diverse legal team. Rita Kriz, head of legal services for Asia at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, which won an FT Innovative Lawyers Award (see chart above), says the growth of the business in the region has created new opportunities for the legal team.
“Because Asia is such a diverse region with different languages, laws and cultures, we are constantly training our legal team to keep pace with business development,” says Kriz. Even as today`s legal departments are under pressure from a new wave of corporate litigation, they have skills gaps to fill and must recruit from a pool of young talent who have doubts about working in legal departments. These challenges are not insurmountable, but require a fresh look at the structure and processes of the legal department. Our experience has shown that general counsel can build a next-generation legal department by addressing four imperatives: clarifying purpose and priorities, establishing an evolving legal ecosystem, anticipating and planning litigation, and enabling legal talent to build a career.