随着新经济时代的到来，越来越多的企业正如雨后新竹一般，迸发出强大的生命力，推动着新产业、新技术、新业态的发展。这些企业的法务团队顺应新经济发展潮流，以迅速的应变能力、富有前瞻性的思维、先进的技术工具为企业提供符合业务需求的、全方位、超高效的法律支持。在这份新榜单中，ALB首次聚焦了中国法律市场上顶尖的新经济法务团队。
新经济“新”在何处？
在信息技术革命的推动下，以经济全球化为背景、创新知识为主导、高新科技产业为龙头的新经济时代已经来临。当今社会正时时刻刻接受着新经济的洗礼。那么新经济究竟“新”在哪里？
新产业
以技术和内容为驱动的新兴产业是新经济的一大产物，而欢聚集团则是该产业中的领先者。
“作为一家面向全球的社交媒体平台，我们的业务内容覆盖了直播、短视频、社交、电商、教育、金融等领域，是非常典型的技术和内容驱动的新兴产业。” 欢聚集团法务部投融资负责人张宁说道，“创新是欢聚集团的基因，从成立之日起，我们一直在不断地孵化和拓展新的业务，新的模式。”
而技术的飞速迭代和内容的丰富多元化则意味着这样的产业不断地处于变化之中，因此，新经济时代下的互联网法务们面对着更加严峻的挑战。
“对于互联网公司来说唯一不变的就是变化，这就需要我们法务具备更宽广的专业涉猎和更快速的学习能力。”张宁表示，以户外直播为例，虽然“户外”品类只属于YY直播业务的一部分，但当直播内容涉及到户外野生动物时，法务则需要完整地了解非常庞杂和专深的野生动物保护相关法律法规，然后制定可行性操作指引和风控建议。
“我们法务团队的知识涉猎面必须非常广，才能全方位地覆盖到业务的各个方向。同时，我们还需要具备前瞻性思维和极强的应变能力，来支持和推动业务的迅速发展。”张宁说道。
新技术与新模式
新技术是新经济的推动力。蔚来总法务顾问兼首席合规官刘昉表示：“近年来，蔚来所处的新能源汽车行业蓬勃发展，融汇新能源、新材料、互联网、大数据、自动驾驶、人工智能等多种变革性技术，推动汽车从单纯交通工具向移动智能终端、储能单元与生活方式转变。”
为保护公司新技术，蔚来法务部在公司设立初始就对其全球知识产权战略有所部署，并在五年的发展过程中稳步执行和推进。刘昉向ALB介绍了蔚来法务团队在知识产权方面取得的硕果：“目前，蔚来在全球近200个国家和地区申报数千项专利，数千项商标申请，个别领域技术和知识产权在行业中位居世界领先地位，切实保护了公司的核心技术和竞争力。”
在新技术的推动下，蔚来新型的商业模式也应运而生，包括零售直销、合作制造、换电升级、车电分离等，而为了满足新型商业模式的需求，蔚来法务团队也提供了相应的支持。
“法务部做了大量审慎而具有前瞻性的可行性研究，协助公司业务部门完成新型商业模式法律构架的搭建、合同文本的制定，以及风险规避应对机制的设计，确保新型商业模式安全稳步的向前推进。”刘昉说道。
新法律
近年来，信息技术的飞速发展引发了社会各界对数据隐私保护的热议。在此背景下，欧洲联盟于2018年5月颁布了《通用数据保护条例》（GDPR），而中国也几乎同时发布了《信息安全技术个人信息安全规范》，并将于今年10月开始实施。
在此背景下，中国领先的本地生活服务电商平台美团也将数据安全和隐私保护作为重中之重，迅速做出相应举措。美团投融资兼交易合规法务总经理刘剑和美团法务BP负责人王小姝在采访中表示，2019年，美团法务团队结合最新政策要求和自身业务情况更新了集团隐私政策，上线了专门的《美团点评儿童隐私政策》和《美团金融隐私政策》，按照国家政策法规要求对儿童个人信息和金融信息制定专门保护制度进行特殊保护。在隐私保护宣传方面，美团积极参与国家网络安全宣传周，参展App个人信息保护展展区生活服务信息保护场景，对个人信息保护的科普知识和企业实践进行展示，并在在网安周个人信息保护论坛上做主题发言，介绍集团个人信息保护的理念和实践。
除了顺应新经济背景下的立法趋势，美团法务团队还参与到推动法制建设的过程中。王小姝介绍，在食品安全方面，美团法务团队积极跟进国家和地方食品安全法制建设进程，共同促进食品行业的法治化建设水平。在上海、浙江、湖北、河南、广东、黑龙江等29个省区市均通过制定地方食品安全立法和监管政策等方式，推进小餐饮登记备案制管理，将小餐饮依法纳入食品安全治理的轨道。
新经济企业的合规与风控
新经济背景下，尽管不同企业的合规与风控体系不尽相同，但都体现出了“紧跟业务、全面覆盖”这一共同点。
张宁说道：“法务必须建立起全面化的合规和法律风控体系，无死角地覆盖到业务的末梢。横向上，欢聚集团法务团队被细分为综合法务、诉讼和争议解决、知识产权、投融资和运营安全等模块，对集团的业务进行全覆盖。纵向上，法务对每一个产品和项目进行全流程参与，及时识别甚至预判法律风险。”
除此以外，欢聚集团法务团队还会引入外部律所对整个公司业务风险进行识别，对合规进行全面评估，通过外部视角对风控体系进行补充和强化。
蔚来在美国纽交所上市后，法务团队牵头开始全方位搭建公司合规体系，具体工作包括：1）设立公司合规委员会，由五大部门的负责人组成，全面领导负责和监督执行公司的合规工作；2）颁布实施一系列公司合规政策和规章制度，涵盖反腐败、反内幕交易、反垄断、反洗钱、员工利益冲突等等；3）建立公司基于合规政策和规章制度的全球举报系统和案件调查反馈结案机制；4）建立符合美国上市公司治理和合规要求的线上审批流程；5） 为全员提供各种渠道、全方位的合规培训，提高全员合规意识和基本素养。
刘昉不无自豪地评价道：“目前公司已建立的规章制度、系统和流程基本符合公司作为一个美国上市公司而言所需遵循的基本要求，案件调查、反馈和处理机制也非常有效而流畅，培训受众面非常广泛，整体合规工作非常有序而高效。 ”
今年5月，美团将公司安全委员会升级为安全暨风险管理委员会，简称风管委。风管委各成员单位涵盖了公司各职能和业务部门，由各风险管理职能部门组成风管委秘书处。风管委确立了 “守住安全底线，动态管理风险、支持业务创新发展”的总体部署，对于新业务、新产品，在兜住安全底线的前提下，大力支持创新和突破。同时统筹开展了动态风险管理专项，成立了项目组，通过风险事件在线化管理、风险扫描和大图迭代、风险分级分层汇报机制等，将风险识别、监测、报告、反馈等闭环管理应用到业务实践中，提升对风险的动态管理能力。
“这一体系使得美团在业务快速发展中，能够快速识别风险并针对性地进行评估和应对，形成风险控制的闭环。” 刘剑说道。
科技手段打造智慧法务
为了保障基本的食品安全，尤其是在今年新冠疫情肆虐时保障民生供给的同时严格控制平台食品安全，让百姓吃得放心、吃得安心，美团大法务体系助力集团自主研发并迭代内部的“天网”系统，即“入网经营商户电子档案系统”，通过“入网审核、在网监管、退网追踪” 三大环节，对入网餐饮商户建立电子档案 , 进行全生命周期管理，确保平台商户信息真实可靠。
而这只是美团法务团队工作科技性体现的冰山一角。美团拥有近万人的业界一流工程师队伍，已经成为业界一流的研发组织，其法务团队也自然将科技手段运用到多个层面：1）引入与业务部门进行日常法务咨询的工单系统和针对突发事件的分级处理系统，这两个系统能够帮助法务提升沟通效率，对各类突发事件进行分级管控；2）搭建公司特色的案件管理系统，以案件风险等级、区域、BU、类型等为维度进行管理，提高诉讼效率，充分挖掘诉讼数据价值，进行科学化管理；3）加强合同管理系统搭建，实现合同申请、审核、用印、归档全流程线上化管理，同时，美团在多条主要业务线进一步大规模部署电子合同签章，签约量过亿份；4）在美团网和点评网以及商户客户端均上线了知识产权维权系统，所有平台商户可以在后台对侵犯自己知识产权的情况第一时间寻求美团大法务的支持与保护，实现了知产投诉全程留痕，有效提高人效和知产投诉纠纷处理的用户满意度，保护了知识产权。
欢聚集团法务团队也引入了线上电子合同体系来解决直播平台主播异地签约的难题，在通过可靠的技术手段确保合同效力的同时，显著降低了管理成本。此外，张宁指出，近几年来，欢聚集团陆续上线了内部合同管理系统、知识产权管理系统、法律案件管理系统等，极大地规范了各项事务的处理流程，对审批节点、事件提醒、文件归档、案件调取、法务费用、供应商考核等全流程进行精细化管理，提高了法务团队工作效能。
蔚来法务团队与公司数字运营部门合作，针对法务工作的一些特殊需求创建了涵盖邮件通信、线上流程、手机线上工具、数据库、法律文档存储库、合规审查流程等综合功能的线上办公系统和流程，在实现远程、同步、高效工作的同时，将相关法务审批流程嵌入公司整体审批流程中，便利了法务部与各业务部门的沟通与合作，并实现了公司治理和业务管理方面的无缝对接。
刘昉还补充道：“我们还会采用一些外部服务供应商的管理服务软件综合管理公司文档、案件、知识产权流程及全球知识产权监控，尽量实现法务工作的线上化和数字化，目前我们还在积极探索过程中。”
未来发展
展望未来，张宁认为互联网领域还会出现更多的颠覆性创新，这也意味着法务团队将面临着更多机遇和挑战。
“我们拥有几乎互联网各个细分领域的法务实践经验，也希望通过经验的总结和复盘，提高法务能力，打造出一支专家型的法务团队；同时，不断地完善法律风险防控的体系，让法务团队能够更加从容地面对新的挑战。除此以外，随着集团不断深入地开拓海外，法务团队还会致力于实现集团国际化战略目标和法务管理的全球化，解决员工法律意识培养、知识产权合规、内容合规、数据保护等问题，建立起更强大的海外法务支撑团队以及关系网络链，与海外律所合作，共同克服挑战、把握机遇。”张宁说道。
在刘昉看来，未来三到五年，新能源汽车行业将继续处于“政策拉动”向“市场主导”的转型过渡阶段，蔚来也将积极适应政策改革的趋势——以高质量产品和极致的服务提升其市场竞争力，致力于研发、技术攻关及提升电池技术、自动驾驶、智能网联等相关领域技术，同时重视与公共领域的合作，积极推动新能源汽车与电网能源、公共交通、信息通信网络等产业融合发展。
基于此，蔚来法务团队也做出了相关的部署与规划。刘昉分享道：“蔚来法务部目前在全球有20多名专业人员，全面负责公司全球法务工作，包括战略投融资、兼并收购、知识产权、争议解决、一般公司法务和合规等事务。为更好配合公司业务发展，我们将进一步完善团队结构、提高团队整体行业知识和专业技能、丰富团队文化。首先，我们会根据公司业务发展需要增设细分业务和新增市场的法务成员，招揽更多具有全球视野、创新意识、高效解决问题能力的专业人员，共同协助公司开拓全球市场和实施下一步商业计划；第二，持续提高团队成员的行业知识和对相关行业法律法规更新迭代的熟知程度，以及提升新兴领域的基本知识和专业技能也是我们在应对快速工作节奏同时的重中之重；第三，加强法务团队的文化建设，加强团队成员的社会责任感和公司归属感，更好适应高强度的工作环境和要求，服务公司，服务社会。”
2020 ALB China Top 15 New Economy In-House Teams
With the advent of the new economic era, more and more enterprises are bursting out with strong vitality, driving the development of new industries, new technologies and new business forms. The legal teams of these enterprises comply with the trend of new economic development, and provides comprehensive and super-efficient legal support in line with business requirements with rapid adaptability, forward-looking thinking and advanced technical tools. In this new ranking, ALB for the first time focuses on the top new economy legal teams in China.
What's new about the new economy?
With the information technology as the driving force for innovation and in the context of economic globalisation, the age of new economy with innovative knowledge as the leading factor and high-tech industry as the leader has begun.
New industry
The emerging industry driven by technology and content is a main result of the new economy, while JOYY Group is the one that stands out in the industry.
"As a global social media platform, our business covers a wide range, namely live streaming, short video, social networking, e-commerce, education and finance. We are a typical company in the technology-and-content-driven emerging industry," Zhang Ning says. Zhang is the head of investment and finance projects of the legal department of JOYY Group. "Innovation is in JOYY's DNA. Since its establishment, the Group has been making efforts to incubate and expand new lines of business and new business models."
With rapid technological development and diversified content, it means that such an industry is constantly changing, posing great challenges to in-house counsels.
"For Internet companies, the only thing constant is change, which requires the in-house counsels to have a wider range of knowledge and faster learning capabilities," Zhang says. Taking outdoor live streaming as an example, although it is only a part of the whole YY live streaming, when the live streaming content involves outdoor and wild animals, the legal team needs to gain knowledge of the relevant laws and regulations on wildlife protection, and then formulate feasible operation guidelines and risk control recommendations.
"Our legal team must have a wide range of knowledge to cover all aspects of the company's business. Meanwhile, we need to be forward thinkers and have strong adaptability to support and promote the rapid development of the business," Zhang says.
New technologies and new models
New technology is the driving force of the new economy. "The new energy vehicle industry thrives. With the integration of new energy, new materials, the Internet, big data, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and other transformative technologies, NIO endeavours to promote the transformation of automobiles from a means of transportation to mobile smart terminals and energy storage, thus bringing people with a whole different driving experience," Liu Fang, general counsel and Chief compliance officer of NIO, tells ALB.
To protect the company's new technologies, the legal department of NIO has deployed its global intellectual property strategic plan when the company was established five years ago, and has steadily rolled out the strategic plan along with the development of the company. "NIO has filed thousands of applications for patents and trademarks in nearly 200 countries and regions worldwide, and its technology and intellectual property rights in some areas are among the top in the industry. The core technology and competitiveness of the company are effectively protected," Liu shares with ALB the achievements of NIO's legal team in IPR protection.
New technologies are as the catalyst for change. NIO has developed and adopted new business models, including retail direct sales, cooperative manufacturing, and the Battery as a Service Program (BaaS). NIO's legal team provides corresponding supports to meet the needs of the new business models.
"The legal department has done plenty of prudent and forward-looking feasibility studies, assisting the company's business departments in completing the construction of the legal framework of the new business model, the preparation of the contract text, and the design of the risk response mechanism to ensure the safe and steady progress of the new business models," Liu says.
New laws
With the rapid development of information technology, data privacy protection has been a hot topic discussed by all sectors of society. The European Union promulgated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018; and almost at the same time, China promulgated the Information Security Technology – Personal Information Security Specifications, which will be put into effect in October this year.
Meituan, China's leading e-commerce platform providing life services, also puts information security and privacy protection as its top priority and quickly adopts corresponding measures. Liu Jian, general manager of investment, financing and transaction compliance legal affairs of Meituan, and Wang Xiaoshu, head of Meituan Legal BP, say in the interview that in 2019, the legal department of Meituan updated the Group's privacy policy according to the latest policy requirements (of the State) and its business conditions, and released the Meituan Children's Privacy Policy and the Meituan Financial Privacy Policy to set up special protection systems for children's personal information and financial information. In order to advocate privacy protection, Meituan actively participated in China Cybersecurity Week, a week-long campaign promoting national awareness on cybersecurity, and in the App personal information protection expo (the scenario of information protection in the provision of life services). Meituan made a keynote speech at the personal information protection forum during the China Cybersecurity Week with regard to the Group's personal information protection ideas and practices.
In addition to complying with the legislative trend under the background of the new economy, the legal team of Meituan also participates in the process of promoting the construction of the legal system. Wang says that in terms of food safety, the Meituan's legal team actively follows up the process of national and local food safety legal system construction to jointly enhance the rule of law in the food industry. In 29 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities including Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hubei, Henan, Guangdong and Heilongjiang, efforts have been made to promote the registration, record-filing and management of small restaurants by means of formulating local food safety regulations and regulatory policies.
Compliance and risk control
Although the compliance and risk control systems of different enterprises might not be the same, in the context of the new economy, they share something in common, which is "keeping in line with business development and covering all aspects."
"The legal department must establish a comprehensive compliance and legal risk control system to cover all aspects of business terminals. Horizontally, the legal department of JOYY Group is divided into several teams (sections), namely comprehensive legal affairs, litigation and dispute resolution, intellectual property rights, investment and financing, and operation safety, to cover all aspects of the Group's business. Vertically, the legal department participates in the whole process of each product and project in order to immediately identify or even predict legal risks," Zhang says.
In addition, the legal department of JOYY Group will engage external law firms to check the businesses of the whole company to see if there are any risks, and conduct a comprehensive compliance assessment to supplement and strengthen the company’s risk control system from an external perspective.
After NIO completed its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, its legal department started to lead the building of a comprehensive compliance system for the company. The specific work includes: (1) setting up the company's compliance committee composed of the heads of five major departments, which is fully responsible for and supervise the implementation of the company's compliance work; (2) releasing a series of company compliance policies and rules, covering anti-corruption, anti-insider trading, anti-monopoly, anti-money laundering, and employee conflicts of interest; (3) establishing a reporting system and case investigation, feedback and conclusion mechanism based on the company's compliance policies and rules; (4) establishing an online approval process that meets the governance and compliance requirements for the U.S. listed companies; and (5) providing all employees with various channels and comprehensive compliance training to enhance their compliance awareness.
"The rules, systems and procedures we've built meet the basic requirements for listed companies in the U.S. Our case investigation, feedback and handling mechanism is very efficient and effective, and our training is oriented toward extensive audiences. Our compliance work has been highly efficient and carried out in an orderly manner," Liu of NIO says proudly.
In May of this year, Meituan upgraded the company's safety committee to a safety and risk management committee (referred to as risk management committee). The member units of the risk management committee include all functional and business departments, and the risk management committee secretariat is composed of various risk management functional departments. The committee sets up and implements the overall deployment of "maintaining bottom line of ensuring safety, dynamically managing risks, and supporting business innovation and development," to vigorously support making innovations and breakthroughs in the development of new businesses and new products under the premises of ensuring safety. At the same time, a special project team has been set up to carry out dynamic risk management in a coordinated and comprehensive way. And by implementing mechanisms such as online handling of risk events, risk scanning, and hierarchical reporting of risks, Meituan applied the closed-loop management in business practice and improved dynamic risk management capabilities.
"This system enables Meituan to quickly identify risks and conduct targeted assessments and responses during the rapid business development, forming a closed-loop risk control system," Liu tells ALB.
Smart legal
In order to ensure basic food safety, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic this year, and to ensure that the food supplied or delivered to people through Meituan 's platforms is safe, the Group' large legal system helps it to independently develop and upgrade an internal "Tian Wang" (sky net) system, the "electronic file system for catering entities operating on Meituan 's platforms", including three major links, namely "registration review, online (in-platform) supervision, and follow-up check on catering entities after they withdraw from the platforms”. The legal department of Meituan also carries out the electronic management of catering entities doing business on the platforms to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the information of the entities doing business on the platforms.
That is only a very small part of the technological work in which Meituan 's legal department has been involved. Meituan has a team of nearly 10,000 top engineers, and has become a first-class R&D team in the industry. It's not surprising that the legal department applies technical means in many aspects of work:
- adopting a work order system to facilitate daily legal consultation work with business departments and a hierarchical handling system to effectively handle emergencies. These two systems can help the legal department improve communication efficiency and carry out hierarchical management of legal matters and take effective control of various emergencies;
- building a case management system with the company's characteristics, which enables the legal department to manage case based on case risk level, regions, business units (BU) and types, to improve the efficiency of litigation, fully tap the value of litigation data, and conduct scientific management;
- strengthening the construction of the contract management system to realise the online management of the entire process, including application, review, printing and archiving. At the same time, Meituan has further deployed electronic contract signatures on a large scale in several its main lines of business, with over 100 million contracts signed.; and
- launching of the intellectual property rights protection systems on Meituan.com, .com, and merchant client terminals. All merchants doing business on the platforms can, through the said IPR protection systems, seek support and protection from Meituan's large legal department if their intellectual property rights are infringed upon, to ensure intellectual property related complaints are traceable, effectively improve work efficiency and user satisfaction in terms of the handling of complaints and disputes, and protection of intellectual property rights.
The legal team of JOYY Group has also introduced an online electronic contract system to solve the problem of signing contracts between live streaming platforms and live streamers. The system has helped significantly reduce management costs while ensuring the effectiveness of the contract through reliable technical means. Zhang points out that in recent years, JOYY Group has successively launched its internal contract management system, intellectual property management system, and legal matter related case management system, to standardise the processing procedures of various affairs and carry out refined management of review and approval nodes, event reminders, document archiving, case retrieval, legal fees, and supplier assessment, which has helped the legal team to significantly improve the work efficiency.
NIO's legal team worked together with the company's digital operations department to create an online office system and process with comprehensive functions such as email communication, online process, mobile online tools, database, legal document database and compliance review process, aiming to meet some special needs of legal work. In addition to realising the remote, simultaneous and efficient work, the system also embeds the relevant legal affairs review and approval process into the company's overall review and approval procedures to facilitate communication and collaboration between the legal department and all business departments, and achieve seamless linking-up between corporate governance and business management.
"We'll also use some management service software provided by external service suppliers to comprehensively manage company documents, cases, intellectual property procedures and global intellectual property monitoring, so as to realise online and digital legal work. At present, we're in the process of finding the best possible practice," Liu of NIO adds.
Future development
Looking to the future, Zhang believes that there will be more transformative innovations in the Internet area, which means that the legal teams will face more challenges as well as opportunities.
"Our legal team has practical experience in almost every segment of the Internet. We hope that through the summary and review of experience, we can improve our capabilities and create an expert legal team; and meanwhile, we'll continue to improve the legal risk prevention and control system, so that our legal team will tackle new challenges more confidently. In addition, as JOYY Group continues to explore the overseas market, the legal team will be committed to achieving the Group's international strategic goals and globalisation of legal affairs management, addressing issues such as the cultivation of employees' legal awareness, intellectual property compliance, content compliance and data protection, establishing a stronger overseas legal support team and relationship network chain, and cooperating with overseas law firms to jointly address challenges and seize opportunities," Zhang says.
Liu of NIO believes that in the next three to five years, the new energy automobile industry will continue to be in the transition stage, from a "policy-driven" industry to a "market-led" industry. NIO will make active adjustments to be in line with the trend of policy reform, which is to enhance competitiveness with high-quality products and best services. NIO will focus on research and development activities to improve battery technology, autonomous driving, Intelligent Connected Vehicle (ICV) and other related technologies. Meanwhile, they will work together with the public sector to actively promote integrated development of new energy vehicles and energy grid, public transportation and information and communication networks.
To support this endeavour, NIO's legal team has made relevant deployments and plans. "The legal department currently has about 20 legal personnel fully responsible for the company's global legal affairs, including intellectual property, strategic investment and financing, mergers and acquisitions, dispute resolution, general corporate legal affairs, and compliance. In order to facilitate the company's business development, we will further improve the team structure, improve the team's overall industry knowledge and professional skills, and enrich the team culture," Liu shares with ALB. "First, we'll recruit new legal staff to meet the needs of the company's business development, who should have global vision, innovation awareness, and efficient problem-solving capabilities, so that we can give more support to the company in expanding the global market and implementing the next-step business plan. Secondly, we'll continue to help our team members to gain more industry knowledge, and keep abreast of the update and development of the relevant industrial laws and regulations. In addition, gaining basic knowledge and professional skills in emerging areas is also our top priority while working efficiently in high demand and fast-paced environment. And thirdly, we'll strengthen the cultural construction in the legal team, and help the team members to enhance their sense of social responsibility and sense of belonging to the company, so that we can better adapt to the high demand work environment and requirements, better serve the company and better serve the society."
To contact the editorial team, please email ALBEditor@thomsonreuters.com.