Timothy Ma, head of international privacy and data protection at Tencent, one of ALB Asia's Top 15 In-House Teams, emphasised the growing significance of in-house legal teams in today's business environment. With the increasing complexity of regulations and legal frameworks across different countries in the region, in-house legal teams have a crucial role to play in decision-making and risk management, thereby assuming a strategic position.
Congratulations on being recognised as one of Asia’s Top 15 In-house Legal Teams! What would you say sets your team apart and contributed to this achievement?
Thank you very much. The International Privacy and Data Protection Team is deeply honoured to receive this recognition. What sets us apart comes down to three things:
- the team’s commitment to pursue excellence;
- the ever-changing legal development in the global privacy landscape that drives us to stay agile and creative all the time in order to be compliant; and
- Tencent’s dedication to privacy and data protection allows us to build a privacy culture within the organisation.
After all, privacy is essential to our businesses and we enjoy doing what we do!
Could you provide some insight into the key strategies your team has implemented to drive success and ensure exceptional legal support within Tencent?
We put in a lot of effort to understand how our products work. We refuse to simply be an ordinary lawyer doing tabletop exercises when it comes to providing advice on privacy issues. We build our own technical tools and a culture of truly understanding how the products work, such that we can provide useful and comprehensive legal advice to our internal clients.
How do you foster a collaborative and cohesive environment within your legal team, enabling them to effectively work together and deliver outstanding results?
Even though our team is spread across four different jurisdictions, we work together as ONE team. We hold regular team meetings to keep everyone up to date on what everyone is working on and share knowledge and intelligence. We also organise team retreats and join international conferences together such that we can all learn and grow together as ONE unit.
Looking ahead, what are your priorities and goals for the future of the in-house legal department? Are there any specific areas or initiatives you plan to focus on to further elevate the team’s performance and contribute to the company’s overall success?
Our goal has always been making sure our products and services adhere to the highest standard of privacy protection as possible with the professional legal service we provide to the business units. With this in mind, in addition to keeping ourselves abreast of the latest legal developments, we need to learn the ins and outs of new technologies so we can continue to be the elite privacy team that our internal clients expect from us.
