Retaining Internal Clients' Trust: Balancing Compliance and Legal Services

August 2017

Abstract

Obtaining and retaining internal client satisfaction, and gaining the trust and respect of the business is the most consistently cited goal of in-house lawyers. In-house legal teams, however, now often provide an additional services to their employer - ensuring compliance by those same internal clients with a host of laws in an increasingly regulated global environment. Examples of these regulations include antitrust laws, bribery and corruption laws, state specific sanctions aimed at countries, companies and individuals, the extra-territorial reporting obligations in terms of breaches of a number of local laws, for example environmental standards, listing obligations, the protection of data and personal information – as well as any number of industry specific regulations.

Author

Brandon Irsigler

Director , Strata Legal, South Africa

Brandon Irsigler trained at Deneys Reitz Attorneys (now Norton Rose Fulbright SA). He started his career in mining as General Counsel to Samancor Chrome. He was then appointed as General Counsel to Anglo American Coal, and was appointed as a director to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal board. Relocating to London, working in Anglo American’s head office legal team, his areas of focus were high value asset disposals in Brazil and South Africa, and key commercial contracts. He returned to South Africa to head the Compliance, Commercial and Litigation function of the centralized in-house Anglo American legal team. He then practiced as commercial lawyer with a focus on M&A in the capital projects and mining sector as an equity director at Norton Rose Fulbright (SA).

Company

Strata Legal

Strata Legal advises those in the extractive industries and those companies servicing the extractive industries in every aspect of their business and operations. Each director has worked for a major South African law firm and has been employed as general counsel or senior executive to a variety of multinational top-tier mining firms. We offer immediate insight into the world of gas, oil and mining related services, with robust, practical legal work product. Our clients include major listed entities on the JSE and FTSE, as well as international commodity traders, and foreign entities starting operations in Africa. Our work tends to focus on high-end commercial agreements and venture formation, aligning new and existing company structures with South Africa's Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment regulations.

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