Alex Puutio did not go to law school thinking about one day becoming a lawyer for the United Nations. His idea was to work his way up from an associate to partner at a traditional law firm in Scandinavia. However, he took an unexpected break from private practice to work for the U.N. in Thailand and liked it so much that he decided to stay. Fast-forward eight years and Puutio is working in New York as an attorney in the U.N. in the Department of Management, Procurement Division.

Teemu Alexander Puutio spoke with Corporate Counsel about how he started working at the U.N., what exactly an attorney in his position does and the legal technology at the U.N. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Corporate Counsel: What made you start working as an in-house attorney at the U.N.?

Puutio: My career started in Asia/Pacific. I was working in the Bangkok headquarters, which is the regional headquarters for the secretariat for all of Asia/Pacific. It was never my intention to work for the U.N. I kind of ended up here. I've enjoyed my time here, but it was never in the cards. I was supposed to be on a tenure track from a lawyer all the way up to partner back in Scandinavia. I was working for Roschier Attorneys. I had to take a break in service for two months and I took those two months to visit the U.N. office in Bangkok. I was there in the trade and investment division.

What are some of the responsibilities of your current role?

For some background, here in New York I believe I am three to four steps away from the secretary general's office. A lot of my work goes into helping out other entities with the contracts and transactions that we have in place and our experiences and in some cases giving legal advice from our office of legal affairs. For example, if a government wants taxes on something and we're supposed to be immune from them, we'll have to figure out what kind of paperwork we need and who do we need to show it to.

As the headquarters, we're the end of the funnel for the field missions. All of these peacekeeping missions we give a certain amount of flexibility in terms of how they arrange transactions and we typically do that based on roles. So there is a chief of a mission who can sign off on X amount, and then there is another person below him or her that can sign off on a lower amount. Whenever something happens for more than $200,000, they have to go all the way up the chain to headquarters to get approval, advice and, in some cases, practical implementation of that. That's a big part now that I've moved to headquarters.

In Bangkok, I was originating some of these requests and working on their end results. Here, it is as if you are internal compliance combined with financial audits combined with a little bit of strategy advice. That's rather unique. I believe the closest example would be a highly centralized decision-making body for an international conglomerate where the branches do have some reporting back on certain types of transactions. For me, that's the most exciting part because it's where I get to put the lawyer and the economist hat on to try to make sure we're getting the best value for our money and trying to abide to the principles of transparency and accountability.

The [other] part is mostly strategy. It could be engagement strategy, it could be product strategy. It could be the structuring of an investment vehicle or a supply chain strategy. Our clients, the missions, will ultimately have to come to us for vetting and approval of whatever they do. It is in everyone's interest if we're involved as early as possible. We do give a lot of strategy advice. We sit and talk with them about what the market looks like, how can we structure this so that you actually get what you need in the timeline and budget you require. That's a very interesting and exciting part of the work. That's something I didn't have in private practice.

In a corporate setting, an attorney is typically called in when something is on fire. I try to make sure that I'm as available as possible to make sure you don't have the kindling there. Once deals go through and once they're operationalized there is nothing that can go wrong because we've already given as much input as possible in the inception phase.

How many people do you work with?

In the current Department of Management we have about 200 to 300 people worldwide. I'm the only one with legal credentials in New York and I'm moving up the chain in a few months. Within the organization, no one really knows we exist unless they deal with us directly. Those who deal with us are very high up. Everyone else doesn't have a reason to engage with us unless something's gone really wrong on their project or if they're cooking up something that's worth billions of dollars.

In terms of people who do exactly what I do, there are 10 to 15 people working in different parts of the U.N.

What kinds of technology do you use?

We have back-end software that makes working with extremely complex orders easy. We might have orders in 50 to 60 different countries and they're all ordering and paying in different currency and without export control. We have software for that. In addition, we've created a lot of our own. When we go out to the market and try to seek legal tech, it could just as well come from any country. Some of the stuff you're better off making yourself because you get exactly what you want and you're not beholden to anyone.

In terms of the overall picture, we're a good five to six years late. All of us are struggling to cope with the fact that when we talk to our colleagues and friends and they show us all of the gadgets they have.