Maria Varsellona, Group General Counsel of Nokia.

MARIA VARSELLONA IS CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER AT FINLAND-BASED Nokia Corp.

Initially, Varsellona studied in Palermo, Italy, and was admitted to the bar in the United Kingdom.

Before her current post, she worked at Nokia Siemens Networks, where she was general counsel and a member of the executive board. In addition, she was responsible for the global legal and compliance functions for the Nokia Siemens Networks Group.

She also worked for the Tetra Laval Group; Sidel Group; GE Oil & Gas, Italy; Hertz Europe, London; Pini, Bingham & Partners, London; the Greco Law Firm, Palermo; and was an adjunct professor at the law faculty of the University of Florence.

In 2014, she was named Nokia executive vice president and chief legal officer. She is responsible for legal and compliance functions and leads about 340 professionals. She also oversees Nokia's patent business, which is responsible for all aspects of Nokia's intellectual property portfolio.

Overall, Nokia is divided into six business groups. These include: mobile networks, fixed networks, application and analytics, IP and optical networks, global services and Nokia technologies.

In addition, there are business units and central functions that support all these businesses horizontally, such as legal. Nokia operates in over 140 countries.

LEGAL TEAM: The individuals on Nokia's legal team include 230 lawyers, 75 contract managers and 35 staff members.

"We have general counsel who support the business group/unit and central function leaders. These people act as generalists and provide strategic legal advice to their respective businesses," Varsellona said.

"In addition, we have senior-level specialists who support key areas such as compliance, employment and labor, litigation, etc. These are very senior-level subject matter experts. This way, our team can provide end-to-end legal support, working closely with our business as business partners."

The legal team is spread across 70 locations globally. A big part of the team operates from the Nokia headquarters in Espoo, Finland.

Specifically, Varsellona is involved in negotiations and acquisition activity involving the company.

"I love the intensity of complex negotiations and am personally involved in some M&A deals, like the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition by Nokia and complex patent licensing and business deals, such as those signed this year with Apple, LG and Xiaomi," Varsellona said.

"We like to do most of the complex legal work in-house. Our team of commercial lawyers and procurement lawyers negotiate all contracts in-house irrespective of the value.

These contracts can range from a few million dollars to above a billion dollars in value and involve complex topics such as employee transfers, financing and the like," she added.

Nokia also set up a legal services center in India, which it uses for basic and repetitive legal tasks. This lets lawyers in markets focus on more complex, strategic and high-value legal work, she said.

OUTSIDE COUNSEL: The company uses law firms for litigation, mergers and acquisitions and certain local law topics. It uses several local law firms.

"We engage law firms primarily for litigation and for topics where the necessary local legal knowledge might not be available in-house," Varsellona said.

TYPICAL DAY: Aside from her work on complex M&A deals and complex patent licensing and business transactions, Varsellona spends much of her time on giving strategic legal advice to Nokia's CEO and the group leadership team. She also spends time catching up "with my team members on various topics—complex matters, people development topics, admin topics, etc."