Bjarne Tellmann, '95, Interviewed in The Lawyer Magazine

Bjarne Tellmann has rebooted publisher Pearson’s in-house legal team, redesigned the entire legal function and reduced the legal team’s budget, and he shows no sign of slowing down yet…

When Bjarne Tellmann joined publishing giant Pearson from Coca-Cola in 2014, he found a legal department that was vulnerable to external risks because no single person had a global line of sight of what in-house lawyers were doing.

In under a year, Tellmann has worked on transforming the culture at the company to be proactive rather than reactive. He rebooted Pearson’s in-house legal team and established a management team in charge of different geographical regions and practice areas. These changes, as well as his efforts to implement internal technology to track contracts and manage more effectively the in-house budget, earned him a place on The Lawyer’s Hot 100 list this year.