In-house lawyer Anouk van der Heijde shares knowledge through the new Academy

She was already working at a range of legal companies during her studies, but in August Anouk van der Heijde made up her mind. Legal Manager is the ideal place for her to grow as an in-house lawyer and to build long-term solutions together with clients. From Thursday she is adding the Academy to that, as a way to share knowledge and find mutual inspiration.

“At the start of my degree I really wanted to become an attorney,” Van der Heijde says. “Like a great many other law students. But during my internship at a law firm, I noticed how much of the work is about solving problems. You work very much in the short term, and it did not feel sustainable. That is how I discovered that the corporate world suited me much better.”

So at the end of 2020 she started at Legal Manager as a working student. “At first it is mostly legal administrative work. But by now I see a great many different companies. I like going to visit them, to find out what it is like there and who is working there. For me it is important not to disappear into paperwork alone. I like being a social link.”

The companies that come to Legal Manager for support vary widely. “It can be something operational,” Van der Heijde says. “Such as maintaining systems for contract lifecycle management or corporate entity management . It can also be that a company has too few permanent staff and is looking for support. In that case I work on site there one or two days a month."

From corporate housekeeping to restructuring

Van der Heijde does exactly that at a large energy supplier, for instance. “Their paralegal has a heavy workload, so I sat down with her to see what I could take over. That produced a number of tasks in corporate housekeeping. I liaise with other countries a great deal, for example, to keep information flowing properly. Before long we want to look at whether I can contribute on the annual accounts.”

The level of responsibility can be considerably higher too, the 26-year-old lawyer says. “Right now I am working on a restructuring project. You liaise with the board and attend meetings to get to know everyone. You visit the works council, you have to put it to the shareholders, you draw up a schedule, documents are prepared to be executed by the notary. Those are all checks I am involved in. A really interesting challenge.”

In total, Van der Heijde works for twelve different companies, from scale-up to multinational. Knowledge she picks up at one organization often turns out to apply elsewhere as well. “You see some of them more than others,” the lawyer says. “Companies where I am present more often are sometimes surprised to hear that I also work at other offices. That is funny to hear, of course. I also think it is a good sign. To them it really feels as though I am involved with their company full time.”

A first with the Academy

From Thursday, Legal Manager takes a new step with its first external Academy. “A client asked us whether we could tell them more about corporate housekeeping,” Van der Heijde says. “We opened that idea up to all our clients. There turned out to be far more interest than we expected. It is going to be quite a large and varied group, from legal counsel through to paralegals. Yes, I am looking forward to it.”

“There is not all that much to be found online about corporate housekeeping as such,” Van der Heijde says. “So in the end we mostly come with our own account of all the factors involved. It does not sit with the in-house lawyer alone, but also with the board and the finance department, for instance. There are a great many links that play a part. The Academy is mainly intended to highlight all those links and name the different subjects. From there we want to see which subjects are relevant as well. It is a kind of try-out, and I am very curious what comes out of it.”

The Academy is meant to be more than a lecture, Van der Heijde says. “In the end it should become an open conversation as well. How do you approach corporate housekeeping within your organization? I think that could get very interesting."