Report from Fondia’s first Swedish Round Table Event!

Fondia arranged its first ever Swedish Round Table Event on January 23th 2014 on the theme “Proactivity – think beforehand (and make sure that others do too)!” The aim of the event is to create an exclusive and recurring meeting place for corporate lawyers and provide the opportunity to discuss various issues common to all corporate lawyers regardless of firm or branch. This time some 20 supervising and corporate lawyers participated in this very interesting afternoon that included presentations and a panel discussion.

During the first hour of the event Johan Isaksson, the Head of Legal at Trygg-Hansa , Katarina Lindgren, Chief Legal Officer at Eniro and Jessica Van Dyke, European Counsel in EA/DICE spoke about their experiences of working proactively in their respective companies. Regardless of the fact that the companies and branches are in different stages of development – insurance, search engine and game development – it was clear that everyone is experiencing the same challenges when it comes to working proactively. The proactive way of working that means receiving the relevant information from colleagues which is needed in order to work with right legal questions at the right time and thus minimizing the unfavorable consequences for the company, preferably in advance.

In order to get the necessary information to be able to work proactively everyone agreed that it requires, among other things, being visible within the company, having good knowledge of your company’s products and/or services, refining relations with colleagues and adjusting the way legal advice is given depending on who is the recipient of the advice.

In practice, it can mean having a “best friend” in each department, participating in other departments’ meetings or inviting colleagues to your own meetings, writing articles on the intranet and taking part in discussions in the hallway.

During the second hour the participants all discussed their own experiences of working proactively in their respective companies. Everyone recognized the challenges as well as the ways to reach out in their organizations. At this point, also mentioned was the importance of having an open office area, social activities with other departments in order to get to know each other.

The afternoon ended with cocktails and continued conversations in smaller groups.

We Fondians would hereby like to thank all the speakers and participants – see you (at the latest) at Fondia Round Table Event in the autumn 2014!