Context

A global technology business scaling rapidly across Eastern Europe, where commercial growth had outpaced the regional legal support structure. With increasing regulatory complexity, an expanding commercial contracting footprint, and active regional M&A, the business needed senior in-region legal leadership — not simply a country counsel, but a Legal Director capable of owning the function across Poland and the wider CEE and partnering credibly with the regional executive team.

The Mandate

Secure a Legal Director to lead the Poland and Eastern European legal function, reporting into the General Counsel and working in close partnership with regional commercial leadership. The profile required multi-jurisdictional legal depth across CEE markets, commercial fluency, credibility as a senior legal business partner, and the pragmatism to balance rigorous risk management with the pace of a scaling technology business.

Our Approach

We began with a focused alignment session with the client's Group General Counsel and regional executive sponsors, clarifying both the technical legal profile and the cultural attributes required to operate between a globally-led legal function and locally rooted regional teams. Every candidate was evaluated against a bespoke scored framework covering technical legal mastery, commercial partnership, leadership of distributed teams, and cultural alignment with a global HQ.

The Outcome

We presented a shortlist of top Legal Director candidates within the agreed timeline. The placed executive — a multilingual CEE legal leader with prior in-house experience at a comparable business — placed into the role in short order.