Meet the E-commerce Legal team

Tell us briefly about yourself.  

Rachel: Hi, my name is Rachel and I am the head of E-commerce Legal.  
Jenna: Hi, my name is Jenna and I am the leader of the Retail team under E-commerce Legal.  
Jenn: Hi, my name is Jenn and I work with Jenna in the Retail team.   

Tell us about your previous work experience and the reason why you joined Coupang. 

Rachel: I previously worked at the National Assembly and a law firm. Back then, I wanted to work at an IT company because the IT industry seemed to be full of potential. As I moved jobs to become an in-house legal counsel, I chose Coupang because I believed that it would be more fun to work in commerce, an area in which I’m well-versed and interested.   

When I first joined Coupang around 2015, the Legal team as a whole consisted of approximately 15 members. While not small in size, the team was certainly not as granular as it is now, where there are multiple business-area specific teams tailored to each business unit. Previously, we only had individuals assigned to a given business or field based on their expertise. Now, on top of E-commerce Legal, we have a multitude of specialized teams in charge of each business, including Privacy, IP, Property & Construction, Corporate, etc. E-commerce Legal alone consists of approximately 20 members.  

 
Jenn: I have started my career as a lawyer at a law firm and recently joined Coupang. I think I have always envisioned myself as a legal counsel who provides first-hand legal advice while closely working with the business teams on-site and deliberating on the relevant matters together, rather than being a counsel on the outside looking in. I also had a strong desire to become a counsel who focuses one’s capabilities on a single company to provide legal advice in a consistent manner. During my years at the law firm, I was given a lot of opportunities to provide counsel on multiple platform companies. During the process, I naturally came to know about the comprehensive structure of an e-commerce company and understood that they require a lot of counsel from a multi-faceted perspective, and thus became interested in the e-commerce industry.

Coupang was different from the existing domestic companies or e-commerce/platform companies. Because Coupang had endured years of investment and had built its core from the inside, rather than pursuing external expansion only, I believed that it had ample potential for further growth. I also believed that my years in Coupang would certainly help propel my career as I was already aware that a corporate culture of high standards was rooted in Coupang. Additionally, Coupang is a multi-national company with employees of various nationalities and diverse backgrounds, and such work environment was a big competitive edge for me.  

What makes the Coupang Legal team special or what is its competitive edge? How does Coupang differentiate itself from other in-house legal teams?  

Jenna: I joined Coupang after working as an in-house legal counsel at a large corporation. My previous company recruited most of its employees fresh out of college through season recruitment and they had to rotate teams on a regular basis following personnel appointment orders. Under such an organization, a lawyer was deemed a special type of experienced hire who only exists within the legal team and “one who is different from us”. Moreover, when it comes to work-related matters, the legal team would simply provide advice from a legal perspective, and it was ultimately the business team that engaged in relevant fact-finding processes or made the final decision. However, Coupang sets itself apart from other companies in that its legal team is considered a business partner, where we not only simply provide legal opinions but go beyond that to jointly review the matter from its nascent stages and discuss the direction of the business together.

Typically, an in-house counsel will only work on a certain set of issues tied to the company’s business (i.e., retail, finance, etc.) and rarely has the chance to review other business areas. However, Coupang operates a multitude of businesses where it is difficult to say that “OOO is the core business of Coupang”. Therefore, new issues will always arise, which require prompt legal reviews, and this is why multiple legal teams with each field of expertise exist. Typically, after working for a year as an in-house legal counsel, one would experience a repetition of similar issues in the subsequent years.

However, at Coupang, you can experience a variety of issues. Indeed, during the process of collaborating with other legal teams with their respective expertise, there are many times where I gain a lot of insight into how diverse an analysis on even a single matter can be, thanks to the multi-pronged perspectives they bring to the table.  

Could you tell us about the structure of E-commerce Legal, and what role each team serves? We also want to understand how you assign new joiners to each team. 

Rachel: For E-commerce Legal that mainly supports our E-commerce business, it is crucial that we understand each business better than anyone else and do not miss any new discussions. So, I’ve divided the function into business area-specific teams.     
Under E-commerce Legal, we have Retail, Rocket Growth, Marketplace, Marketing, Eats, Global E-commerce, and Case team in charge of responding to litigations or regulatory inquiries.

In our team, performance reviews are done based on whether the member has made a direct impact, has the right understanding of business, is able to handle a project, can work efficiently with other members, and whether s/he can perform work following Coupang Leadership Principles, rather than what class s/he was in the Judicial Research and Training Institute or when s/he passed the bar examination. I apply such performance standards when hiring team members, who, after onboarding, will be assigned to various urgent issues with no specific team affiliations. After observing how they work, I decide which team they will be assigned to. 

We’ve heard that the intensity of work is high in Coupang E-commerce Legal. What are the work intensity and atmosphere like in E-commerce Legal? 

Jenna: A day in E-commerce Legal is always dynamic. Not simply because of the work volume but because of how we approach work. Our role in E-commerce Legal is not just about listening to factual details and presenting our legal interpretation, but about closely understanding the business, based on which we ensure that the business team moves toward the most efficient direction. 

Performing such a role, E-commerce Legal members are adept at working together and have a deep understanding of the business. We take turns by team (Retail, Eats, Service, Operation, etc.) to come to the office for a week, so roughly, every month, we work in the office for a week and work from home for the remaining weeks. 

I usually turn on my laptop at around 9:00 a.m. to list up the to-do items for the day and schedule my time by taking into account meetings before starting the day. 
If possible, I try to handle urgent tasks in the morning, and in the afternoon post meetings, I spend time quietly reviewing contracts and working on documentation before ending the day. On WFH days, in particular, I put more efforts into managing my schedules and physical conditions. 
 
Jenn: At Coupang, you will have 1:1 sessions with your manager to discuss the jobs you’re handling and receive feedback. The feedback you will get from such communication with your leader can help expand your perspective and view and is likely to help you understand the areas where more work is needed. And I personally feel that we exchange views with colleagues very actively here at Coupang. There are a lot of things we learn from these different perspectives. 

Which teams does E-commerce Legal mostly work with? 

Jenna: Since my team works most closely with business teams, we cooperate with other Legal teams and Compliance teams a lot. Among them, the teams that we cooperate with the most are Fair Trade Legal and Fair Trade Compliance, the teams responsible for fair trade-related matters; when fair trade issues occur, we share and discuss the issues together to resolve them. In addition, we collaborate quite closely with IP Legal and Privacy Legal as issues related to intellectual property rights or personal information protection also occur rather frequently. 

Who do you think are the right people for E-commerce Legal? 

Rachel: Working with a lot of people, I’ve learned and am still learning that what matters in Coupang is how you work, not what you’ve done. People at Coupang work based on different standards than those of other companies and they’re all expected to perform their jobs as leaders.  

Therefore, one might fail to adapt to Coupang even if they’ve had a colorful career; on the contrary, one can perform much better in a certain position here at Coupang even if they’ve gone unrecognized in their previous organizations. Experience at a law firm or as an in-house lawyer all may or may not help you here at Coupang.  

My team has members who didn’t major in law and is composed of people with a wide variety of backgrounds, including law firms, in-house legal teams, public organizations and industries like manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and distribution.  

That’s why what’s most crucial in this organization is not what experience you’ve had or what kind of career you’ve built, but how you perform based on your experience and career in line with Coupang’s Leadership Principles and work with others efficiently to deliver results. And that, I believe, best demonstrates whether you are “the right person for Coupang.”  

Also, although there are multiple divisions within the team, since E-commerce Legal works as one team, you’ll often have to work on other businesses than the one you’re responsible for, depending on what project you’re in. So, I think it’s very important that we share a common understanding that anything that is Coupang’s business is our job.