Legal Risk Management - Anticipating and Pre-Empting Legal Problems

Aurelia Dragomirescu, Director, Legal, Vodafone Romania, Romania

Legal service provided by in-house lawyers evolved over the last period from pure advisory and consultancy type of business into legal risk management. Business is considering in-house lawyer as their business partner and not only as their specialist in legal matters. This demanding relationship will lead in-house lawyers to focus on proactive legal services to manage business expectation – anticipating and pre-empting legal problems. Legal work will no longer required to concentrates only on addressing specific deals or disputes but to understand the business in all aspects and to align the legal strategy with the company strategy. Such business expectation trigger high responsibilities for an in-house lawyer in Romania where the legal regime is a fast changing environment and where the judicial system does not recognize the precedent concept. Therefore to predict the chances in case of a potential litigation and to develop a legal strategy for the specific needs of the business is a challenge. I shall develop in my article some of the challenges developing the trust business relationship with the internal clients. I shall not forget the reason why I choose to go to the Law University – the Court cases – and I shall explain some challenges that we might have following interpretation of the precaution principle stated in European Union Treaty.

Aurelia Dragomirescu has an experience of 25 years of practice as in-house Counsel. She has found the work as in-house fascinating and challenging. She is also focusing on ADR and methods and arbitration.

Vodafone Romania, a subsidiary of Vodafone Group Plc., had 9,532,530 customers, as of 30 June 2009. Vodafone is the world's leading international mobile communications group with approximately 315 million proportionate customers as at 30 June 2009. Vodafone currently has equity interests in 31 countries across five continents and around 40 partner networks worldwide.