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14 Int'l. In-House Counsel J. 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/iihcj14 and id is 1 raw text is: International In-house Counsel Journal Vol.14, No. 54, Winter 2021, 1 In-House Counsel's Guide to Surviving Without Business Travel TODD KRIEGER Director of International Transactions and Senior Counsel, InterSystems Corp., USA Business travel may not return to its pre-pandemic levels for many years, but the need for face-to-face meetings to negotiate complex transactions has not diminished. While technology has helped facilitate remote negotiations, video calls with multiple participants are not always an efficient substitute for in-person meetings and adapting requires additional time and discipline. Some transactions that could have been concluded in-person in a week may instead require many virtual meetings over the course of several months. Early in my career as in-house counsel, one of my colleagues insisted that I fly to the UK for a two-day customer meeting. We had been trying to finish contract negotiations for an elaborate transaction with an important customer, and the discussions had been ongoing by phone and e-mail for several months. I protested at the suggestion of a business trip because we had been making steady progress with the customer and my calendar was already overflowing. Based on the results of our conference calls, I was confident that we could continue to work on the contract remotely, rather than in person. At that point, the contract was several hundred pages long, including about two dozen contract schedules. We need to create an event, my colleague explained, a 'lock-in' meeting so that everyone is at the table until we get the deal done. He was worried that if the process continued for too long, the transaction might eventually be at risk. While I didn't believe that the meeting would be any more productive than the approach we had been taking, the transaction was sufficiently significant that I agreed to go. He arranged for the necessary decision makers or their representatives to attend so there was no delay for approval to resolve any contentious points. Despite jetlag and travel fatigue, the first meeting started early in the morning and we went line by line through the open issues for the next 12 hours. We concluded the negotiations the second day after eight more hours and had agreed upon the outstanding points. Could you have just dialed in to a conference call? a colleague asked me when I returned, probably because I was looking tired from the journey. Yes, I explained, but it would have taken much longer. What has become apparent in the many months since travel has been restricted is how much longer it would have taken, and what additional steps are needed to compensate for the challenges of remote video negotiations. Prior to the pandemic travel restrictions, as in-house counsel, I negotiated most of the international transactions that I worked on with customers and vendors from my office by phone, email, and video, in conjunction with my colleagues. Working remotely wasn't much of a change when travel stopped. There were a few exceptions every year, however, with certain large, complex transactions that justified travel, and these are the ones that have become more difficult and time consuming. Travel may have been necessary for 'lock-in' type meetings to conclude a contract; team meetings with the other party to make introductions, discuss the process, and identify gaps; or a formal, regimented customer procurement that mandated in-person meetings. ISSN 1754-0607 print/ISSN 1754-0607 online International In-house Counsel Journal