GC Spotlight: Zack Quek, General Counsel at Ninja Van.

Zack Quek

We are talking to General Counsels from different industries to get some insights on how they're navigating their legal departments during tough times.

We have cast the spotlight on the General Counsel of Ninja Van, Zack Quek. Ninja Van is SEA's leading logistics & courier service provider. Here's how it went! 

1. What have been your biggest challenges over the last few months?

Inability to travel limits my ability to learn the business - especially since I have been in the organisation for 4 months. Understanding warehouse and delivery operations cannot be done properly via Zoom. Building of trust and camaraderie with key stakeholders across the region work better via in-person interactions and over drinks.

2. What are your key priorities for the next year?

Achieve higher quality of legal services. At the same time, to have higher level of oversight of legal teams across the region. 

3. What are your thoughts on, or experiences with, legal technology and how do you envisage it changing the way your legal team operates?

LegalTech can help in Knowledge Management and allow legal team members to tap on each others' experience etc. I think that if legal teams can properly tap on team members' experience, we'll probably have less external legal spending and legal team members can demonstrate more value to the organisation.

4. How do you think about the use of data relating to your legal department’s activities (e.g. data relating to contracts, risk, tracking work flows, performance metrics, costs)?

We can help track key areas of risks (e.g. how many onerous indemnities we are giving, how many unlimited liability contracts we're entering into). With this, we can formulate strategies to mitigate these key areas of risks. Otherwise, no one really has an overview on the company's risk picture.

5. Are there any specific changes, developments or trends that you expect (or hope) to see in the legal services industry?

Huge improvement in AI-enabled contract review digital solutions. The current state of machine learning requires a lot of specialists' input on past precedents and for specialists to review/quality assure AI's performance to modify AI's behaviour. Further, current AI-enabled solutions are helpful only for the review of a high volume of similar or identical documents. Not many organisations require legal review of similar or identical legal documents as organisations frequently push them as standard / non-negotiable contracts.

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