Mahmoud Shafik Youssef, Group General Counsel at Foodics in Saudi Arabia explores how the GC role is evolving into an enterprise trust function – designing governance for scale, embedding AI accountability, and transforming legal from a review mechanism into a performance-driven growth enabler.
What has been the most defining moment of your career as an in-house lawyer so far?
The most defining moment was stepping into a role where the company was scaling across multiple jurisdictions while running strategic transactions in parallel Operational agreements restructuring, PDPL implementation M&A, restructuring, and IPO-readiness under intense time pressure.
What made it defining wasn’t the complexity alone; it was the shift in mindset it forced: from “legal as review” to “legal as architecture and business partner.” I had to design governance, decision making and risk controls that didn’t slow the business down, while still being strong enough to stand up to regulators, auditors, and future public-market scrutiny and governance.
That was the moment I became very clear on what good in-house legal looks like in high-growth tech: you don’t just manage risk you create trust at speed with all leaders, business partners and shareholders.
In what ways do you see the role of the GC changing over the next 5–10 years?
The GC role is evolving from chief legal officer to enterprise trust leader. Four shifts stand out:
1. AI governance becomes board-level governance.
GCs will be expected to translate AI risk into operational controls: model accountability, data lineage, vendor governance, incident response, and explainability aligned with cross functional and boarder data protection and cybersecurity regimes.
2. Regulatory complexity becomes continuous, not episodic.
The “big compliance project” mindset won’t work. Leading GCs will build living systems: playbooks, controls, training, and monitoring that adapt as products and laws change.
3. Value creation becomes measurable.
Boards and CEOs will expect GCs and Legal team to show outcomes: time-to-contract, dispute avoidance, revenue enablement, audit readiness, and risk-adjusted growth not just opinions. The legal function becomes a performance function.
4. Legal Team
High-performing legal teams won’t be measured by how many documents they review, but by how effectively they scale the business safely.
The GC will build teams that:
a) delegate intelligently (principles + playbooks + authority limits),
b) productise repeatable work (templates, clause libraries, approval matrices), and
c) act as strategic partners across Product, Security, Finance, and Compliance – without becoming bottlenecks
How do you foster innovation and agility within your legal team?
The legal team should be seen like a product team: clear priorities, repeatable workflows, and fast feedback loops.
a) Design for speed: pre-approved fallback positions, clause playbooks that let the team move without reinventing the wheel.
b) Push decisions to the edge: empower lawyers with principles and risk thresholds so escalation is the exception, not the default.
c) Build “legal ops” discipline: dashboards for contract cycle time, bottlenecks, disputes, and regulatory actions so we can improve like any other function.
d) Use AI responsibly: we adopt tools where they improve quality and speed while embedding guardrails (confidentiality, access control, data minimisation, human always in the loop). e) Communication: a great legal team should always ensure coordination and communication between each other to align on the policies.
What qualities do you believe distinguish truly impactful GCs from good ones?
Truly impactful GCs understand that not all risks are equal, a distinguished GC will focus on the Company goal and strategy, and will make sure to translate legal complexity into simple, decision-ready choices: if we do a strategy, here’s the upside, here’s the risk, and here’s the control we need to make it safe. They build credibility with pace, protecting the company without becoming the “department of no,” and they elevate governance by making boards and executives better through clean decision records, disciplined approvals, and real accountability. Above all, they develop talent and build teams that can operate without constant heroics, delivering sustainable excellence.
If you could change one perception about the in-house legal profession, what would it be?
I would change the perception that in-house legal is primarily a “risk-avoidance” function.
The best in-house legal teams are growth enablers. They create the conditions for speed and scale: repeatable contracting, defensible compliance, trustworthy AI and data practices, and governance that protects decision-makers. When legal is embedded early with Chiefs and in Strategy meetings, you don’t get more red tape you get fewer surprises, faster execution, and stronger outcomes.
