Anom Sedayu is the Vice-President Legal at PT ASDP Indonesia Ferry (Persero), which was recently named Transportation and Logistics In-House Team of the Year at the ALB SE Asia Law Awards 2024. In his role, he is responsible for overseeing corporate legal matters and providing essential legal counsel to ensure the company's business operations comply with Indonesian laws and regulations. He is also involved in drafting, reviewing, and negotiating a wide range of contracts. Sedayu joined ASDP Indonesia Ferry in 2017 and assumed his current role in October last year. He previously held an in-house position at PT Angkasa Pura Properti.
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ALB: Can you describe your typical day or week as a general counsel? What are some of the key responsibilities and challenges you face?
Sedayu: As the General Counsel of PT ASDP Indonesia Ferry (Persero), the world's largest Ro-Ro ferry operator with 226 vessels operating in 307 routes across the Indonesian archipelago, we are responsible for protecting the profitability and sustainability of the company's business and operations by ensuring all the company's legal requirements are fulfilled. With our status as a state-owned enterprise, the challenge is not only limited to maintaining a high standard of regulatory obligations but also to keeping agile in the ever-changing landscape of business nature.
ALB: How do you balance legal risk management with enabling business growth and innovation within your organisation?
Sedayu: The art is to be fully aware of risk, not limited to legal risk, but also anticipate other risks such as financial, reputation, and operational. Such risks, if not properly managed, will reflect rising legal risks. Thus, viewing any transaction from a helicopter view of not only the legal aspect but also considering and engaging other stakeholders and aspects is the key to balancing the business's need for growth and lowering legal risk.
ALB: How do you approach risk assessment and mitigation in your role, particularly when it comes to high-stakes or precedent-setting legal matters?
Sedayu: We are always prioritising the mitigation of handling the potential legal matter by way of socialising and ensuring all the legal policies are fully aware by our stakeholders. In addition to that, providing routine legal briefings on new updates of legal policy and regulations to not only the whole legal team by way of sharing sessions, therefore our team has the same way of handling any legal matters but also to the entire stakeholders, thus anyone in the company has a same vision on preventing legal cases.
ALB: How do you stay up-to-date with emerging legal trends, technologies, and best practices in your field?
Sedayu: Law is a dynamic field that continues to develop as regulations, cases, and precedents change over time. Additionally, with the rapid development of technology that enables the access of information in real-time at any time, it is now easier than ever to keep up to date with legal and sectoral developments. In addition, the usage of technology in the legal team's services process is crucial to making the process more efficient.
ALB: What advice would you give aspiring lawyers or law students interested in pursuing a career as an in-house legal counsel?
Sedayu: The most important thing is to keep a spirit of continuous learning as each business has its nature of operation and characteristics that need to be adjusted by aspiring lawyers or law students. As general counsel, we need to be more sensitive to the company's day-to-day operations as we will be first-hand handling any related legal matter. We are also responsible for maintaining such legal risk, as such matter will not impact any other related matter or be a legal issue.
ALB: Looking ahead, what are the biggest legal challenges or opportunities facing your industry in the next 5-10 years?
Sedayu: Automatisation of the legal industry is getting real. With the endless innovation rising, it is not becoming an option but compulsory for our legal team to increase skill and knowledge and keep innovating on enhancement to our legal services flow and making us get better day by day and keep considering any potential risk on its implementation. Supported by the power of sensitivity to handle any legal issue, the role of automatisation of technology will not change the role of general counsel but will make our role more efficient than before.
