First of all, can you briefly introduce yourself?

My name is Rosanne Kronenburg, and I started as Account Manager Legal Operations at Legal Manager last month. After graduating from Leiden University (Business Law and Intellectual Property) and gaining experience abroad, I started working at an international trademark agency. Here I supported clients with the optimal protection of Intellectual Property and advised on trademark development, registration, security, and enforcement. After several years working in consultancy, I made the step to the corporate world to be more involved in building and protecting a trademark in an international company.

Interesting! And what did this add to the knowledge you already had as a corporate lawyer?

Mainly, process improvement is a continuous process. I managed the global trademark department at Le Cordon Bleu, an international culinary and hospitality school network. There, the first challenge was getting all the data in order. The in-house software they used also lacked many functionalities. For example, it was not yet possible to put legal procedures in the database, even though there are deadlines for this, and I wanted to be able to report on them. By making a good inventory of what information is important and what I want to see in reports, we adjusted the database to become a reliable source of information.

Why did you become so immersed in legal tech and legal operations?

At Le Cordon Bleu, I was partly responsible for corporate housekeeping and contract management, in addition to responsibility for IP. Since there was no use of available technologies, there were a lot of gains to be made here in terms of efficiency. The first step was to get a picture of the current situation, what kind of data is involved, where is it, what do you want to record, and what do you want to be able to report on? Then I started looking into legal tech; what technologies are available? Are we going to work with these, or do you work with a proprietary platform? Ultimately, we decided to use Wolters Kluwer's management system Legisway. After implementing a management system, training people who work with the system and the data is very important. People must first understand how the technology works and then they must also want to use it; only in this way will you get an optimal process.

And that fits well with your new job at Legal Manager. Doesn't it?

Yes, it does! I am now putting my experience gained in business to use at Legal Manager, helping clients optimize legal business processes, implement the right technologies and train the people who use these processes and technologies.

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