23 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS – MAY 2024 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM bolstered by the strategic use of automation tools. Krisma Guyala, general counsel at Nestle Philippines, concurs. “With AI, general counsels can redirect the routinary, low-expertise legal tasks to free up the lawyers’ time to focus on business partnering, anticipating issues, and crafting solutions, or the more complex aspect of legal work,” says Guyala. However, she also warns of potential risks arising when applying AI tools to legal work. “As for the rising market volatility and geopolitical complexity, in-house legal teams should take a more proactive stance in risk assessment and mitigation and crisis management,” adds Guyala. Indeed, general counsel are entrusted to identify and protect businesses from risks in the environment in which they operate, including unknown risks associated with the use of AI. “AI achieves better outcomes and elevates the quality of work. Predictive analytics powered by AI can even forecast litigation outcome, a streamlined due diligence process and identify potential risk in mergers & acquisition transactions,” says Hemant Kumar, group legal advisor at Larsen & Toubro, an industrial technology conglomerate based in Mumbai. “However, general counsels must navigate these advancements thoughtfully to mitigate potential drawbacks and ensure the ethical use of this technology.” The Dong-A ST team, which includes legal counsel Jinri Kim and Soon Ji Jung, highlights data security as one of the novel challenges brought by AI use confronting in-house legal teams today. “The escalating volume of sensitive data being transferred and processed necessitates stringent safety protocols. Especially in today’s interconnected world, companies increasingly engage in global partnerships, resulting in the cross-border exchange of data,” the team notes. “Given the uncertainties surrounding data privacy, it is imperative for general counsel to proactively monitor evolving regulatory landscapes governing technology in the legal sector and institute robust safety protocols accordingly,” they add. For example, the Dong-A ST team propose to establish a standard operating procedure (SOP) in the event of a data breach, which will enable in-house legal teams to provide preliminary risk management strategies, thereby mitigating legal and regulatory exposure. COMMERCIAL STRATEGISTS Hiromitsu Kato, general counsel at Japanese oil giant INPEX Corporation, is convinced that in-house legal team can work together with their external counsel on implementing AI tech in work such as contract reviews and disputes to streamline in-house workload. Indeed, technology, with its promises of higher efficiencies and lower costs, has prompted corporate legal teams to re-evaluate their working relationships with their private law firm partners. According to a recent Thomson Reuters report, with AI adoption on the rise and the pressure to reduce spending on external advisory services continued, more than half (56 per cent) of the respondents surveyed believed that in-house departments themselves will carry out a greater proportion of legal work in the next 18 months. For one, Kumar of Larsen & Toubro believes that engagement with external counsel should be minimal and issuebased. “We see the current business landscape as an opportunity to transform an area of business and to extract more value for the company. Changing regulations and globalisation create a compelling reason for legal departments to change their operating model, achieve greater efficiencies and increase the value they deliver back to the business,” he says. The Thomson Reuters report also showed that the introduction of AI has increased the appetite among in-house legal professionals for value-based or alternative pricing models from law firms, posing a fundamental challenge to the lucrative fixed-fee pricing model serving as the bedrock of private practices. Specifically, a vast majority of professionals surveyed (86 per cent) ASIA TOP 15 IN-HOUSE TEAMS 2024 ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam AVANADE ASIA Singapore BANK OF SINGAPORE Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore DONG-A ST South Korea GLAXOSMITHKLINE Japan GOTO Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam HANMI PHARMACEUTICAL South Korea INPEX CORPORATION Japan LARSEN & TOUBRO (L&T) India LAZADA GROUP Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam LINK ASSET MANAGEMENT Hong Kong NESTLE PHILIPPINES Philippines PINGAN ONECONNECT BANK (HONG KONG) Hong Kong THAI ASIA PACIFIC BREWERY Thailand ZOMATO India
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