How do you manage the legal affairs of a high-end British fashion house in the world's fastest growing luxury goods market? Burberry's Asia-Pacific director of legal, Kathie Choi, talks franchising, e-commerce and Kate Moss with Elizabeth Broomhall

Causeway Bay, home to the Hong Kong head office of Burberry, recently overtook New York's Fifth Avenue as the most expensive retail property location in the world.

High above the window shoppers, on the 44th floor of Lee Gardens in the heart of the district, the luxury fashion chain's Asia-Pacific legal director, Kathie Choi, is dressed – appropriately enough – in a Burberry shawl. Neither retail nor fashion were sectors Choi had planned on entering, but since arriving at the company in 2010 she hasn't looked back.

"I love this industry," she says. "To be honest, who wouldn't take an opportunity to work at a fashion house?"

Before joining the company, Choi trained and worked as a litigation lawyer at legacy Lovells' Hong Kong office, having returned to the city to live closer to her family following an education in Australia. After four years in private practice, she didn't go straight into fashion. Choi's first taste of in-house work was for the Italian chocolatier Ferrero, where she was given the task of building the Asia-Pacific legal team from scratch.

Although she enjoyed the job, a move into fashion came about Christian Dior made her an offer she couldn't refuse. The switch to Burberry came some years later, as the fashion brand sought to buy back its China business from the local franchisee – a deal Choi was eager to be involved in.

"When I was looking to change jobs again, the opportunities that came up were all fashion-related," she explains. "Burberry was a very young office in Hong Kong, and my first task when I came on board was the acquisition of the China business. I found it very challenging and that was one of the reasons why I considered moving. I thought you don't get many opportunities to get those kind of deals in an in-house career."

Sitting alongside just one other lawyer, a paralegal and a secretary, Choi is used to having her hands full. The team currently handles all of Burberry's legal work across its operations in Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, relying on external lawyers when matters are beyond its expertise. The company also has operations in the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, but these are managed by franchisees, while a separate brand protection team, also based in Hong Kong, takes care of counterfeiting and intellectual property cases.

Developing online
While Choi finds the work stimulating, much of her team's daily grind stems from Burberry's retail operations, including drafting, preparing and reviewing tenancy agreements, and dealing with customer complaints or in-store issues. Perhaps the most interesting and demanding aspects of the job, she says, are those related to e-commerce: "We are quite a fast-moving company, so we were one of the first luxury brands to invest a lot in resources to develop e-commerce. For fashion brands, and high fashion in particular, it only happened in the last couple of years."

The main challenges include ensuring online products listed on local platforms match the descriptions and pricing in-store, as well as other customer data and privacy matters. "How do you make sure what we offer in our 'world store', or our internet store, is consistent with what we do in our physical stores?" is a typical question facing Choi. "The descriptions of the products – are they in compliance with the regulations? In some countries you need to state country of origin and the major material used for the particular types of products; in some countries you don't have to."

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In China the brand also has a virtual storefront on Tmall, one of Alibaba's main e-commerce sites, which requires lawyers to work closely with the brand protection team to control the possible sale of any counterfeit products. There are also legal issues that arise when marketing through social media, especially as the company looks to tap a younger demographic.

"It's not just about middle class customers," explains Choi. "We see younger Chinese customers as the major future [consumers of luxury goods]. That's definitely one of the focuses. So in the last few years we have evolved a lot in terms of our image and the people we engage for our advertisements.

"It adds a bit of flavour to the role. When you're focusing on younger customers you tend to explore various platforms and do things a bit [differently]; for example, more social media marketing. Those activities bring up legal issues, which are interesting for in-house lawyers."

Other tasks include managing the company's legal response to increasing consumer rights in China to avoid court battles with customers, and supporting the Hong Kong marketing team with large events. The latter is of course more fun, as it involves product launches, hosting UK music bands and thrashing out contracts and documentation for supermodels such as Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.

Advisers
Despite a broad range of work Burberry does not have a large panel of firms in Asia; its average annual legal spend stands at less than HK$1m (£80,000).

It has traditionally used DLA Piper for most matters, given a global agreement with the firm that guarantees lower rates, though the company used Slaughter and May for the repurchase of its businesses in China and Hong Kong. The retailer also works with Drew & Napier in Singapore, Kim & Chang in Korea and Jun He in China.

Though the company has no plans for a formal review, Choi recently switched to Global Law Offices in China and is currently looking for additional advisers in Korea. Given the size of the business and the difficulties in navigating cultural and language barriers there, the company is considering hiring an in-house lawyer in Seoul.

'The next big thing'
But the biggest priority will be Japan – well-known as one of the world's largest fashion markets. In May last year Burberry announced plans to expand in the country, targeting a four-fold revenue increase to £100m by 2017, as well as a doubling of store count. As part of this strategy, the licence to distribute Burberry-branded products – currently owned by local company Sanyo Shokai – will not be renewed when it expires next year, and the network of businesses will be operated directly by Burberry. The Burberry Blue and Black labels, which Sanyo sells exclusively, will remain with the company for three years but will no longer use the Burberry name, according to reports at the time.

For the legal team, Choi says this is a major project, as it effectively means a handover of much of the Japanese business. "It will involve a transfer of business information, the relocation of some of our staff [...] and a transfer of concession agreements for locations that we want to keep.

"Customer data issues are an important aspect. The licensee has been collecting a lot of Burberry customer information over the years and this is valuable knowledge. But customers provide that information to the licensee, not to Burberry, so how we are going to inherit that data is also a major challenge that we are facing."

The company is looking to recruit an in-house lawyer to focus exclusively on Japan, as well as boosting relationships with external advisers for counsel in specialised areas of the business transfer, such as data privacy. It has already employed two local law firms, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune and Momo-o Matsuo & Namba.

Which sums up why, for Choi, the next year is set to be a particularly busy one, and why working for a fashion company is always exciting. Asia will no doubt continue to be a big market for the brand globally, as it is for most designers, but, for Choi and her team, "the next big thing will be Japan".

• Related event: Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum Singapore 2014