An interview with Tommi Mustonen, General Counsel at ReOrbit in Finland.
What are the biggest external forces or trends currently shaping your role as General Counsel and how are you responding to them?
I have extensive experience in defence and aerospace business, and anything related to aviation is very extensively regulated. Now that I am leading the legal affairs of a space satellite company, I can see that the amount of regulation related to space activities is rising sharply. This is due to the increasing interest in the commercial and military use of space. For me, it is important to stay abreast of the development and possibly even try to influence it in some way, so that it would not burden the business, especially young entrants like my company, too much.
How are you balancing the increasing demands of legal risk management with the expectation to drive business value and strategic insight?
One needs to know the business decision makers within the company and what drives them. Some people are more concerned about getting more revenue, for some others it is the profit and for some, controlling risks is the most important aspect of business. If you know the weak point of someone, you should balance that by paying extra attention to that. However, you need to have good argumentation ready and a smart way to present it, if you are going to offer the kind of advice someone is not expecting or hoping to hear!
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?
As an in-house lawyer, your relationships with your internal clients, the management of your company and the rest of the stakeholders are as important to your success as your legal skills. It is not to say that legal skills would not be important, but those relationships are in most cases needed for satisfactory career development.
