Alibaba may boost its legal team by around 25% in the next year as the Chinese e-commerce giant looks to grow its digital entertainment business and boost its profile outside of the mainland.

The Hangzhou-based company, which currently has 160 legal staff, could hire up to 40 additional lawyers in the near future as it looks to capitalise on its recently acquired media group, now known as Alibaba Pictures, and enhance its popularity among international brands and consumers.

"The team will grow as our needs grow but I can see it growing to 200 pretty soon, possibly [in the next year]," said general counsel Tim Steinert in an interview with Legal Week.

"We want to plug in the pieces so your whole day is spent at Alibaba. One of the key areas is digital entertainment – getting books, TV shows, movies and games on the site. So we need people in licensing, who have experience in different types of content, movie production, that kind of thing.

"And we're trying to increase the cross border activity of the company, so we need people who have the background – both legal and cultural – to do the international work."

Disputes would also be an area of focus, he said, due to a high caseload related to consumer rights, intellectual property and merchant contracts. Currently the team handles approximately 200 cases per month.

"We have a lot of disputes – mostly small on the mainland. There is starting to be consumer advocate law firms who get a bunch of people together and sue.

"We also expect that as we become bigger the regulators will focus more on us so we need people to deal with that."

Alibaba's in-house function has increased significantly since Steinert joined in 2007, when there were just 35 staff. Lawyers are now spread across four of the company's offices in Hangzhou, Beijing, Hong Kong and California.

The last two years have been particularly busy for the team, following the company's record-breaking $25bn US IPO in September – ranked the largest in the world – and a spate of acquisitions during the period aimed at maintaining the group's dominance in China's fast-growing internet market.

Data compiled by Bloomberg in August estimated that Alibaba had announced $5bn worth of acquisitions in the previous 12 months, including a 60% stake in ChinaVision Media Group – now Ali Pictures – and the buyout of digital mapping company AutoNavi for $1.58bn.

In its IPO prospectus, the company said it would only continue to expand in the coming years in line with China's bulging online shopping population and in particular, a swell in mobile internet users.

"Our M&A investment [legal] team has been steadily growing, and I expect that will continue to grow," added Steinert.

"The internet space is active because it's a very entrepreneurial fast-moving industry, there is a lot of change, there are a lot of new things in all parts of the world. There is a tremendous opportunity out there, particularly in China. You put all those aspects together and you have quite an active M&A market."

As one of China's big four internet companies, Alibaba is now thought to account for 80 percent of the country's online transactions.

In the twelve months ended 30 June 2014, it reported that its three dominant e-commerce platforms Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan generated a combined gross merchandise volume of RMB1,833bn ($296bn), from a total of 279m active buyers and 8.5m active sellers.