An interview with Juan Pablo Fernandez, Group General Counsel at TopSource Worldwide in Netherlands.
What are the biggest external forces or trends currently shaping your role as General Counsel and how are you responding to them?
| External forces influencing the GC role | How to respond to them |
| Compliance and regulatory complex, fast-paced environment for the EOR, Payroll, and HR services industry. | Building cross-border legal intelligence capabilities to keep monitoring any changes in the applicable employment and payroll regulations. Develop a risk register based on scenario-based risk assessment. Building a network of external legal advisors who can provide value-added legal advice in specific matters according to the operational needs of our company. |
| The use of emerging legal technology brings new legal risks related to data privacy, intellectual property, and the use of AI-powered tools. | Identification and due diligence process (from an information security, data protection, and contractual protection) of any vendor providing technology tools. Identify risks and mitigation actions before implementation. Agile implementation of the right automation tools (contract life cycle management, legal research, risk management) |
| Expectations from the Board of Directors for the GC role | To build strong legal teams by ensuring each team member brings the right set of skills and knowledge to the team. Permanent training, coaching, and career development are key. GC role needs to have a fair understanding of the operations and commercial goals of the company to provide tailor-made legal solutions, and good management of data analytics to demonstrate the legal value of any proposed solution to allow the Board to make decisions on risk management and governance, procuring a balance between compliance and business growth. The GC role is a business enabler for the company and not just a legal gatekeeper. GCs need to build strong partnerships with other teams to gain vital information before applying legal solutions. |
| Economic environment | With the current economic and geopolitical situation, companies are under high pressure to operate on a lower cost, doing more with fewer resources. GC’s role needs to implement a good prioritisation system to focus the legal team on addressing the main needs of the company. |
How are you balancing the increasing demands of legal risk management with the expectation to drive business value and strategic insight?
Identification of the company’s goals (growth, reputation, market positioning, etc), identification of compliance risks related to the operation of the company, and prioritisation of the implementation of the mitigation actions is the key to strike balance.
What’s one lesson or insight from your in-house journey that you wish you’d known earlier and would share with a fellow GC today?
To develop business and operational acumen to ensure that any legal advice is not only legally, but commercially and operationally feasible to implement.
