*Lexpo Special* Balancing Legal and Business Risks to Ensure the Success of Large-Scale Digital Transformations

I spoke with Tommi Ogi Possnert, a legal industry leader based in Stockholm and a featured speaker at the Lexpo Conference, taking place in Amsterdam on June 16th and 17th. We discussed the most common challenges companies face when implementing new technologies in legal, how to balance risks to ensure the success of large-scale digital transformations, and how the role of in-house legal teams is evolving in an emerging era of AI, automation, and data-driven decision-making.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan, and I'm speakingtoday with Tommy Ogie Posner, a legal

(00:22):
industry leader based in Stockholmand a featured speaker at the Lexbo
conference, which is taking placein Amsterdam on June 16th and 17th.
Hi, Tommy.
How are you?
Great.
Thanks for having me.
It's my privilege.
I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Tell us about your background andyour career in corporate legal.

(00:44):
I'm Tommy.
I'm a lawyer and I spent basically adecade now working with tech and digital
strategies at various global companiessuch as Ericsson and Sandvik, but I'm
also passionate about learning new things.
And.
I tend to look for inspiration whereverI can find it, both far and wide.
For example, I actually went to universityto study as a professional chef, and

(01:06):
that gave me new insights and it mademe develop a method on how you can
actually use the method of cooking inmaking the way we work with tech much
more better and much more effective.
Ultimately, it all boils down to humans.
What inspired you to focus your career onthe intersection of law and technology?

(01:27):
To be very honest, it's been a fair bitof chance involved in this, but I happen
to work at companies where tech has beenvery important and also in environments
where it has been ever changing.
And that in combination with tech has ofcourse posed various legal challenges.
And those challenges has of course changedas tech has become more regulated as well.

(01:51):
So this has of coursebeen very interesting.
But as tech has also become more importantto organizations and society, and as I
become more experienced, I also try toput things into perspective, and not
just run quickly into different types.
Because I think that even in a fastpaced environment, and also in an
ever changing environment, it isimportant to reflect where we are going.

(02:13):
And why we're going there.
Perhaps it is even more important toask yourself these questions when the
pace just goes quicker and quicker.
What are the most common legalchallenges companies face when
implementing new technologies?
If I would give you an easy answer tothat question, the challenge would be to
keep track on the tsunami of regulationsthat is hitting tech globally now, and of

(02:38):
course, then understanding the compliancerequirements to that and setting a
sort of level that meets the compliancerequirements, but not necessarily overdo
it, and that is, of course, a challenge,but an answer that would be a little
bit more fun and interesting, which alsoinvolves a little bit more complexity is
actually connecting the new technologywith humans and the human needs.

(02:59):
Thanks.
Because many times I've seenthat we want to implement new
technology just because it is new.
Because there is a hype, andthere is a fear of missing
out going on at the moment.
But often I see that we haven'treally thought of why we want to do
something, and what we want to achieve.
That might seem strange, but I thinkit's just so easy to do things just

(03:20):
because other people are doing it.
and other organizations are doing it.
And benchmarking has been a trendfor quite some time, but it is
actually quite little research thatis supporting the idea that just
copy pasting of what is successful inone organization will be successful
in another or in your organization.
So in practice, I think thatit is then more of a human

(03:44):
challenge than a legal challenge.
Because if you question the lawfulnessof a particular thing, That can be very
challenging if everybody else is actuallydoing it and have seemed to accept it.
But the problem can be that theothers haven't really thought of
the aspects that we are considering.
And then you have the risk of justvery quickly get a mass of people

(04:05):
and organization that just trust eachother and just run along with the hype.
And then on the flip side, I alsosee that the possibility of doing
legal interpretations can verymuch get limited if people don't
fully know what they want to do.
Because many times the legalityof things that are connected

(04:25):
to tech isn't necessarily thetech itself, but how you use it.
But if you face people who just wantto jump on a hype and are also afraid
of missing out, and they just want toimplement the new tech because it's new,
but they don't want to do it, then thelegal challenge is very much again a human
challenge to make everyone understand whatthis is about and where you want to go.

(04:50):
How do you balance legal risks withbusiness needs to ensure the success
of large scale digital transformations?
First of all, I think it'sworth remembering that there are
actually rarely any objectivityconnected to what a legal risk is.
And anyone who has negotiated anagreement will probably recognize this.

(05:11):
Because otherwise we wouldn't spendso much time on negotiating contracts,
we can take months on end on justseeing and identifying what is a legal
risk, how do we perceive them, andwho should take them, etc. And with
this in mind, I believe that it ismore important and very important to
at an early stage establish a clearownership of all the different risks,

(05:33):
and who will ultimately decide on them.
That doesn't really mean that weshouldn't cooperate with each other,
rather the opposite, because I find thatthe more we cooperate with each other,
the better everything will become.
Because when you do cooperate, everybodycan actually fully understand and get
buy in on how to manage different risks.
But I also see that you can actuallyidentify new risks when you are working

(05:58):
together, whereas if everybody's justlooking at them in silos, you don't
identify the same risks necessarily.
And when you do identify those risksand how to decide on how they should
be managed, and also what is viewedas acceptable in the organization,
I think it's also very importantto factor in time and resources.

(06:18):
Because it's so easy to just sitin a meeting in your organization
and saying, this is our level ofacceptance, nothing beyond that,
this is the way we will mitigate it.
But as soon as there is a mismatch, andyou meet that counterparty who don't
have the same views as you, it will takea lot of time and resources at hand.
And I've seen quite many times howbusiness people are getting more

(06:40):
and more frustrated with this.
And then, inadvertently, what happensis that the business needs is actually
inadvertently getting downprioritized.
And you can ask yourself, isthat really what the end goal?
Because many times I think that isnot the consequence of a deliberate
decision from everyone in theorganization and everyone involved.
Because it may very well be so thatlegal is actually taking on more

(07:03):
than what the business is asking for.
Or that legal take the liberty in lackof better terms to make risk decisions
on behalf of the business, even thoughthose risks decision can very well
be ultimately a business decision.
And this can happen without no oneeven asking for it or identifying it.

(07:24):
And here I think we should also remembersomething that we as lawyers tend to
forget is that It is risky to do business.
It is also impossible to foreseeevery single thing and every single
risk and try to cater for everythingin the future, especially when we're
talking about large transformationsin a fast paced environment.

(07:48):
Because in all honesty, how many of usdid in a detailed way cater for in all
the contracts, the war in Russia, the7 October attack, or even the pandemic?
Again, I believe that humans are key,because ultimately, It is humans doing
business with each other, with goodrelations, good understanding of each

(08:09):
other, and a genuine partnership whereboth parties actually benefit long term.
The unknowns and surprises can be managedeffectively whilst taking various legal
risks and other risks into account.
But the moment you start waving withthat contract in a formal way, the
chances are that you might win thebattle, but you will probably lose

(08:30):
the war because that also effectivelymeans that the partnership is ended.
No one wants to do businesswith each other when you start
fighting in a formality of ways.
And then you need to gooff, find a new partner.
That will take time, it will takeresources, and ultimately will slow
down the very transformation thatyou want to perceive and pursue.

(08:52):
How can law department leadershelp their companies manage cross
border compliance more effectively?
I'm a strong believer and I verymuch like tech, so I think that
tech in various shapes and formsand AI can be a help here, and that
can also help build a robustnessand resilience into the compliance
programs, and also build resilienceinto the different lines of defense.

(09:16):
But compliance is also a lot aboutpeople and culture, where it's the
key is actually to fostering a culturewhere everyone in the organization has
a moral compass to do the right things.
And also have the moral compass to guidein very complex situation where it's
technically more different shades of greyrather than just the black and white.
So if you put too much focus on justthe tech and the tech enablement, there

(09:40):
is an inherent risk that you lose outon what the core of compliance is.
corporate culture.
How do you see the role of inhouse legal teams evolving in an
emerging era of AI, automationand data driven decision making?
This is, a very interesting questionand I think that you can spend so much

(10:02):
time on this and just speculating.
So of course there will be manythings that will evolve and everything
can happen so quickly nowadays.
And we've seen that.
year by year, how everythingmoves very quickly.
But, and right now, I think thatwe're almost in a moment of a
perfect storm where we combinethe hype, the fear of missing out,
but not all combined also with notalways the clearest of intentions.

(10:25):
But with that said, I think that I'mmainly thinking about two trends of
risk depending on how you view it.
I think one is that we have arisk that we actually put too
much faith in automation and AI.
And here, there is some interestingresearch when it comes to the
effect of it, effectivity of teams.
And that shows that havingclear roles in a team is great

(10:47):
for tasks with low complexity.
And these tend to be the areas that isusually subject for automation, but for
tasks with high complexity, usually thestuff that lawyers want to work with
and should work with the role of theteam must be more fluid and must be
able to change quickly within the team.
But interestingly, some researchhave found that the introduction

(11:08):
of automation in environmentwhere which is highly complex.
Ironically.
Reduces the efficiency and ability tohandle those complex tasks when automation
at large is as a large scale is introducedin organization and that effectively
can turn a high performing fluidteam that can handle complex matters.

(11:29):
to a highly ineffective team for thecomplex matters, but extremely efficient
for the low complexity matters.
So that's one aspect.
And the other aspect is that I think,again, coming back to this, that there
is a need to focus more on humansand focus on what we want to achieve
because the easier it will be tolet's say draft an agreement using
AI, the more important it will bethat we as lawyers and organizations

(11:54):
are extremely clear on what we want.
Because at the same time, we alsoneed to consider us as humans.
even more, where ethics and other aspectswill become even more important, because
other aspects that we're not putting timeon will become so much more effective.
And this may seem obvious, but in manyinteractions that I had throughout

(12:14):
the years, I have found that quitemany people are just doing things
out of habit, because they havedone it before, they used to do it.
And when you ask them and try todrill down, they can't really clearly
answer, why are you doing this?
And sometimes they'rejust pushing for things.
Because they were trained and theyhave been learned to push for that.

(12:34):
Again, when you try to drill a bitdeeper, you recognize that they're
not fully aware of the concept and whythey are asking for these very things.
You will be speaking at theLexpo conference taking place in
Amsterdam on June 16th and 17th.
What will you be discussing and whatare your expectations for the event?

(12:57):
It's a great honor.
What I will do is try to my verybest to introduce the method that
I developed on how you actually canuse the method in the kitchen in,
in, in your way of working with tech.
And there I hope to inspire all of thedelegates to try it out for themselves.
Both in their kitchens andwhen working with tech.
Because the beauty of this thing is thatyou can actually try it out on a daily

(13:18):
basis and see how you can improve themethod itself and get a head start in
lack of better terms for your actual techimplementations that can be very long.
And then my expectations for Lexpo is, tohave so many interesting conversations,
getting inspired and getting newideas, and also to learn from others.
As I said, I'm looking far and wide forinspiration, so I'm very interested and

(13:41):
keen on learning how other things, howother people are doing it, what are they
thinking about, what are their priorities,and very much looking forward to a great
event and much interesting discussions.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking with TommyOgie Postenaert, a legal industry leader
based in Stockholm and a featured speakerat the Lexpo conference taking place

(14:02):
in Amsterdam on June 16th and 17th.
Tommy, it's been such aprivilege and I look forward
to learning from you at Lexpo.
Yeah,
hope
to see you there.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals podcast.
Visit ReinventingProfessionals.
com or AriKaplanAdvisors.

(14:24):
com to learn more.