With Anton Herbots joining as Legal Counsel, LCL brings legal expertise in-house. This will allow the company to further professionalise its processes, move faster and work even more closely with customers, suppliers and partners. In his role, Anton is the go-to person for legal matters, from contract negotiations and regulatory requirements to M&A and GDPR. It is a broad remit, and deliberately so. As LCL continues to grow, the number and complexity of the legal matters grows with it. 

For Anton, Legal is about much more than reviewing contracts or mitigating risks. It means understanding where the business wants to go, assessing risks in the right context and working together to reach agreements that work for everyone involved. This while continuing to meet the stringent compliance and quality standards that are essential in the data center industry.

From lawyer to in-house Legal Counsel

Before joining LCL, Anton spent several years as a lawyer in Ghent, working on a wide range of corporate law matters. That broad experience proved to be excellent preparation for his current role. Over time, however, he found himself wanting to become more closely involved with a single organisation.

“As an external lawyer, you provide advice, but you are often only involved with a company at specific points in time. I wanted to be able to think more long-term: how do we approach something, what direction do we want to take and what structures do we put in place?”

Anton found that opportunity at LCL. As in-house Legal Counsel, he now works closely with teams across the organisation, from Projects and Operations to Sales. An important part of his role is bringing greater structure to recurring legal processes. This also ensures that the legal knowledge built up across different cases remains within the organisation. “Over time, I want to streamline certain processes further, for example by developing clear templates and guidelines. That way, colleagues know what to look out for and we can move faster.” It is an approach that fits an organisation that continues to grow. Legal becomes more than a control function: it actively helps create the foundations needed to support that growth in a scalable way.

High standards, with room for dialogue

That is equally important in LCL’s relationships with customers, suppliers and other partners. LCL operates in an environment where reliability, continuity, security and compliance are critical. Those expectations are also reflected in the agreements LCL makes with the organisations it works with. The company sets high standards for itself and expects its partners to be able to meet those same quality requirements. Anton points, among other things, to standards, regulations and ESG requirements that need to be reflected in contractual agreements.

But high standards do not mean that contract negotiations should be a one-way conversation. “The easiest thing you can do as a lawyer is say: ‘No, that’s not possible.’ Then you simply throw the ball back over the fence. But ultimately, the real question is: what are we actually trying to achieve?” That is why Anton approaches legal questions from a risk perspective: which risks genuinely matter, how likely are they to materialise, and how can they be mitigated sufficiently for the business to move forward?

“LCL shares its template and explains what matters, but from there, the conversation begins. The aim is to arrive at a balanced contract.”

This is precisely where Anton sees the added value of working in-house. As his understanding of LCL’s business, ways of working and priorities deepens, he can assess legal risks in the right context. Not every point of legal discussion needs to hold up negotiations for weeks.

Stronger together across the ecosystem

That dialogue matters because LCL does not operate in isolation. Its services are part of a broader ecosystem of customers, suppliers, contractors and other partners. The quality and compliance obligations that customers place on LCL therefore extend further down the supply chain. At the same time, LCL relies on strong partners to deliver on its own commitments. “LCL wants to be able to assure its customers that certain standards and obligations are being met. To do that, it is important to extend those same principles to suppliers and partners.”

In some cases, this means asking suppliers to make commitments that go beyond what they may be accustomed to elsewhere. Here too, Anton favours dialogue: rather than simply imposing requirements, the aim is to explain why they matter and explore together how they can be met. In this way, compliance becomes more than a purely legal exercise. It becomes a shared responsibility across the ecosystem in which LCL operates.

Building the foundations for further growth

Anton is still very much in the process of developing LCL’s internal legal framework. Contract templates are being updated, processes are becoming more clearly defined and legal knowledge is embedded within the organisation. For Anton, this is also an important objective for the years ahead. “I’m looking forward to the point where we can say: there is a solid structure in place, and we can focus even more on where LCL wants to go next.”

Because just like the data center industry itself, the regulatory landscape never stands still. New European requirements, increasingly stringent compliance expectations and emerging topics such as AI mean that the legal function is constantly evolving as well. For Anton, that combination is exactly what makes the role so interesting: putting legal expertise to work, developing a deep understanding of the business, and working with colleagues and partners to build the structures that will support LCL’s continued growth.