Dutch-headquartered network-as-a-service provider Expereo’s general counsel and chief compliance officer, Sujata Kukreja, has had an in-house career spanning roles in India, Singapore and the UK. Currently based in London, Sujata talked to Global Legal Post about her remit at Expereo, her legal career and what attracted her to working in-house.
What are your key responsibilities as Expereo’s general counsel?
As general counsel, I sit as the senior executive in the company whose goal is to manage enterprise risk. That’s the overarching aspect. Obviously, at a granular level, that means overseeing legal, regulatory and corporate governance matters, and in doing this, I’m acting as the trusted advisor to my CEO and my board. So that could be overseeing corporate transactions like a joint venture or an M&A, or setting up new entities, or it could be a high-profile litigation. At the bottom of it all, it’s managing corporate risk.
How is your legal department structured?
Legal budgets are shrinking, so I needed to make sure that while we are a small team, it has to be efficient. When I joined, we structured it as a T-shaped organisation, so everybody’s a generalist but with a specialist skill. So with that structure, we were able to cover our global footprint very effectively. And, of course, we have the option of also adding some legaltech for that. So that’s how I shape the organisation because we have a global remit, so we look after APAC, Europe and America.
Have you got teams in those regions as well?
No, most of them sit here in Europe. We have a single lawyer covering the Americas for time-zone purposes, and we cover Asia out of Europe because Asia today is still our developing market. So when we see an absolute need, we will do that. We are very lucky that we can use Amsterdam and London as a good time zone to cover all the regions.
What are your legal department's priorities over the coming year?
I’ve always made sure that legal has a seat at the table, so our priorities are absolutely linked to the company’s priorities. As a business, that’s focusing more on network as a service, as well as supporting digital transformation, revenue generation, EBITDA growth and customer service. With digital transformation and AI, the legal team now needs to upskill and focus on all the diverging and converging regulations that we have, so AI policy in Europe and Asia. Our focus is on bringing a cross-functional team together to ensure that AI is being used responsibly.
Then the second part of it is revenue generation, and within that, how legal can really embed itself into the lead-to-cash process. Every year, we challenge ourselves to reduce that lead-to-cash time period by 20%, so that will also be the focus this year. And finally, it is the people piece, which comes in from ESG. I also look after the sustainability portfolio of the company. I’m very lucky that I was able to promote one of my lawyers to become an ESG manager, so she sits under me, and that’s how we will drive the social strategy piece on the people side. So the company is focused on quite a lot of priorities.
How have you been adopting AI in your legal department?
We’ve been looking at how to handle repeatable tasks, so things like NDAs, filling RFP documents with cybersecurity questions, and answering basic code of conduct questions for customers. If this tool can help me eliminate that, I can reroute the work that we do to other things, like product development. If 30% of our work can be done by an AI tool, we can focus on strategic matters.
What are the biggest challenges in-house legal teams face at the moment in general?
The real challenge is managing risk at the speed of innovation. That is what every legal team is facing right now. With the advent of AI, it’s almost become the responsibility of the legal team to ensure that one is keeping up with all the regulations and ensuring that we are rolling out AI in a responsible way. The second challenge is data privacy and data sovereignty around how you’re storing, managing and transferring data. We need to transfer data between the Americas and Europe, so that is a big challenge that we’re facing. But when there is a challenge, there’s opportunity. As lawyers, we love finding solutions. So this is the right time for legal teams to take on more of a strategic role so they can project manage across functions to embed risk mitigation in the business.
Your previous in-house roles have been in Singapore and India – what are some of the main differences you see in terms of how corporate legal departments operate in different jurisdictions?
I’ve been very privileged to have worked in many jurisdictions across the world, but at the bottom of it, all the work is the same. Legal’s job is to mitigate risk. However, it is probably the value given to the function that differs across regions. Let’s take Southeast Asia. Singapore is where the APAC headquarters usually sit for global companies. So there, the focus is more on global cross-border needs or expansion. However, in Europe, the GC is more integrated into the board, where they are managing risks such as sustainability or GDPR. If you look at the Americas, for instance, there is stronger value given to CLOs or GCs because the GC role is more commercial in nature. So that’s where they would be more involved in strategy and M&A and so on. A lot of it is the cultural mindset that changes the role, and that’s how I’ve seen it.
You started your career in private practice at White & Case – what attracted you to working in-house?
I personally believe every lawyer should start their career in private practice so that they can hone their technical skills and learn customer relationships. You will not get that anywhere else. I’m very grateful for that time. But you are always two steps away from your customer’s business, and I realised that I enjoy that juxtaposition between law and commerce, and that’s what was missing for me. I was very grateful that the senior partner I had during my time in White & Case was very commercially driven, nonetheless, I do enjoy using my legal skills towards actual revenue generation or seeing how I can support a business grow, and that’s what drove me to move in-house.
How do you see the role of the GC evolving in the future, particularly as technology reshapes how work is done?
It will change, but not because of technology. I already mentioned how legal needs to become more strategic, so the role of the GC is becoming more strategic in nature, and I don’t think the digital world can replace that just yet. The GC now needs to be more proactive versus reactive, so we have to embed ourselves right at the beginning of a product development or go-to-market proposition, so that’s where I see the change. And with the current political instability around the world, our role has to shift into being a more trusted adviser that is focused on long-term resilience, because we are going to face things like supply chain disruption, sanction regimes and trade restrictions, so the GC has to get ahead of that. We have to start thinking like the business; we are no longer just legal guardians, we are now embedded in the business as a clear value add.
Where in the world would you most like to visit that you haven’t been before?
I definitely want to cover all the continents. The one I haven’t been to is Antarctica, so that’s definitely on my list. The reason I haven’t done it so far is because I probably need to take a sabbatical. I don’t even enjoy the cold, but it’s purely because I am a world traveller. I’ve been very lucky to have lived and worked across many cultures and regions, so I really want to cover the whole globe. That’s a personal life goal that I’m trying to get to.
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