Good morning. While our day-to-day often focuses on contracts and compliance, when crisis hits, senior leaders look to Legal to steady the ship and navigate a course through stormy waters. I’ve seen in-house lawyers given tight windows to brief a coherent response to geopolitical shocks from Brexit to Ukraine. An escalation in Greenland would be no different. Our top story draws a line from EU trade responses to organisational readiness. Elsewhere, Dyson faces the High Court over forced labour and France relents on in-house privilege. Some relief with a new fully-EU AWS cloud and a Matthew McConaughey themed IP story.
This edition is about how Legal absorbs volatility without amplifying it. 🎯
— Philip
If you read one thing this morning, read the Briefing Room. Everything else is optional.
BRIEFING ROOM
What does the EU’s trade “bazooka” actually involve?
Canva AI
The governments of France and Germany this week indicated support for activating the EU’s “anti-coercion” instrument, in response to tariff threats from the United States linked to President Trump’s stated desire to acquire Greenland.
Known by the press as the EU’s trade “bazooka”, the instrument is found in the less memorably named Regulation 2023/2675. The law defines “economic coercion” and sets out a process that entails:
🔹 Co-ordination between the European Commission and the European Council.
🔹 Attempts at resolution with the third country, for example via negotiation or mediation.
🔹 Opportunities for Member States, businesses and consumers to give their views on any response measures.
Only “as a last resort” can the Commission issue an implementing act to restrict access to the EU market. At this stage, the Commission would then have a wide menu of options to use against the US including:
Counter-tariffs and custom duties, which could be sector specific.
Quotas or other restrictions on importing or transiting US goods on the EU single market.
Public procurement restrictions on US companies.
Restrictions on trade in services supplied by US-linked providers, potentially including digital and professional services.
Measures affecting trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, for example suspending or limiting certain IP protections for US rights-holders.
That said, measures would have to be “proportionate” to damage caused to the EU, continuously monitored and terminated when necessary.
In a press conference on Monday, the UK Prime Minister indicated that tariff retaliation was not yet on the British agenda.
Geopolitics → operational reality
Although on closer inspection the “bazooka” looks measured and thorough, GCs understand timings could be hastened by politics. For boards, the issue is less whether the bazooka is fired and more how quickly assumptions underpinning pricing, sourcing and delivery can change.
When briefing the exec, Legal might decide to:
🔹 Map exposure starting with business critical suppliers and available alternatives.
🔹 Recap pricing and delivery assumptions in customer contracts, that might assume frictionless trade, and corresponding force majeure wording.
🔹 Consider if their organisation would input into any Commission-led implementation consultation, and how to ensure consistency with wider public affairs efforts.
Even absent a trade war, the mere fact these tools are being discussed reflects geopolitical risk growing as an area of influence for legal teams.
RISK RADAR
Canva AI
🇬🇧 Dyson in forced labour trial. The English High Court ruled last week that claims alleging forced labour and exploitation in Dyson’s supply chain will proceed to a full trial in April 2027. Brought by 24 former migrant workers linked to Malaysian suppliers, the case has survived jurisdiction challenges and will involve disclosure of internal audits and senior legal correspondence relating to a prior defamation claim against Channel 4 and ITN.
Why it matters: English courts are willing to hear complex supply-chain human rights claims against UK multinationals, even where alleged abuses occurred overseas. The disclosure ordered, and the prospect of follow-on claims, mean pressure may build well before trial through evidence gathering, reputational exposure and board-level scrutiny of how supplier risks are monitored and escalated. For in-house teams, this reinforces that modern slavery statements and audits can become litigation artefacts years later - not just compliance paperwork.
🇫🇷 France recognises privilege for in-house legal advice. France has formally adopted legislation recognising the confidentiality of certain legal advice provided by in-house counsel, ending a debate that has run for more than 30 years. The new law protects qualifying internal legal opinions under specific conditions (for example the author having a Masters degree in law and training in professional ethics; addressing the advice to senior management; and properly labelling the advice). Criminal, tax and EU investigations are carved out.
Why it matters: This is a meaningful shift in a jurisdiction long resistant to in-house privilege, narrowing a well-known gap with several other European systems. More importantly, the longer-term impact is cultural: when privilege feels uncertain, people write less freely and Legal loses signal precisely when judgement matters most.
🏠 CMA extends dawn raids into directors’ homes. The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal approved a warrant allowing the CMA to search the home of a managing director who had told investigators he did not use his personal phone for work during a company dawn raid. The tribunal accepted evidence that the phone was used for anti-competitive exchanges and that documents might otherwise be concealed, noting the growing use of domestic raids as work devices blur into private life.
Why it matters: This signals a harder edge to UK cartel enforcement, where personal devices and home working no longer create a practical boundary. For in-house teams, the pressure point is behavioural as much as legal. Statements made during raids and informal device use can escalate an investigation from corporate to personal risk, including intrusive home searches and potential director disqualification.
FROM THE SIDEBAR
Quick signals worth clocking (optional reading)
☁️ AWS launched a “European Sovereign Cloud” which is physically and logically separate from those in other regions as well as being operated exclusively by EU residents. The product makes compliance with EU data protection law easier.
🇫🇮 The IMF maps the skills that matter and who is ready for the next decade of work, with places like Finland and Ireland pulling ahead on education and adaptability.
🍿 Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey has registered voice and video trademarks based on his most iconic scenes, as a deterrent against use in AI-generated videos.
POLL OF THE WEEK
Our current poll already shows how prominently execs treat AI, with all votes received landing in our top two categories:
🟩🟩⬜⬜🛡️ As a core business risk, on a par with data protection or cyber
🟩🟩⬜⬜🕰️ As important, but something we’ll “formalise later”
⬜⬜⬜⬜☑️ As a compliance box to tick when regulators force the issue
⬜⬜⬜⬜🙈 As someone else’s problem (tech, vendors, or the future)
You can add your vote below before the poll closes.
How seriously does your leadership team take AI governance today?
HIRING BOARD
This week’s senior legal hiring clusters around product-facing roles where legal is expected to move at operating speed, not review speed.
🇬🇧 Harvey. Alongside opening a Paris office and hiring a new VP Sales from Canva, the scale-up legaltech AI platform is formalising legal as part of go-to-market execution, with counsel embedded directly alongside sales and product rather than downstream review.
🇬🇧 Mastercard’s Senior Product Counsel spec shows a mature global business doubling down on lifecycle product lawyering, signalling that legal judgment is expected to shape product design, launch, and positioning at scale.
🇧🇪 Tesla is recruiting parallel regional and country roles that reinforce Tesla’s model of legally self-sufficient market counsel, combining consumer, regulatory, commercial and infrastructure work into a single operational mandate rather than discrete legal silos.
Taken together, these roles point to a raised bar: senior in-house lawyers are being hired as product and market operators with legal authority, not internal reviewers of finished work.
Legal is expected to sit closer to revenue, regulation and delivery, with less tolerance for narrow remit roles. The split between “commercial”, “product”, and “regulatory” lawyering continues to erode, especially in businesses where speed and external scrutiny now move together.
IN THE CALENDAR
🗓️ CMA “burden on business” review. The UK CMA has opened a consultation on whether to remove or amend a chunk of legacy market remedies, explicitly framed as easing compliance burdens. The consultation runs until 2 March 2026.
In parallel, Sky reports the government is preparing to announce this week a radical overhaul of how merger probes are run, including scrapping the CMA’s panels system and changing parts of the market studies / investigations machinery.
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ABOUT THE EDITOR
I’m a General Counsel working at the intersection of regulation, product and board-level decision-making in tech and regulated markets.
I work with a small number of companies and leadership teams where senior legal judgment is needed to navigate growth, regulatory pressure or investor scrutiny. Get in touch.
- Philip
Too much legal content is dull and jargon-filled. Profiles in Legal is for lawyers who want to think clearly, sound credible in the room and get promoted.
This newsletter is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Seek professional advice for specific situations.