IBAT: Interim Legal Counsel for a Mission-Driven Organisation

Client Profile: IBAT

The Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) Alliance is a leading global provider of biodiversity data and tools, supporting organisations across the world. Through its comprehensive datasets and science-based solutions, IBAT delivers some of the most authoritative biodiversity information available, enabling businesses, financial institutions, and governments to make better-informed environmental decisions.

The Challenge: Complex and Experienced Legal Support

As the client’s commercial reach expanded, so did the complexity of its legal requirements. IBAT needed an experienced legal professional to step in for three months to cover a workload that was predominantly commercial contracting but required breadth across data protection, intellectual property and compliance as and when issues arose.

Commercial contracts formed the core of the brief. The incoming lawyer would need to lead end-to-end negotiations with subscribers and collaborators, advise on deal structure and risk allocation, and develop templates and playbooks for the wider team. Beyond that, they needed to be able to move fluently into data protection, intellectual property, risk management and due diligence as matters arose, providing both strategic input and practical support across each area.

Equally important was finding the right fit for the organisation.   IBAT’s mission is to provide authoritative data, tools and guidance that help organisations act on biodiversity related risks and opportunities. The right candidate needed to understand that context and engage with it genuinely, not simply treat it as any other commercial brief. The position was part-time, ideally suited to a legal consultant seeking flexibility, who was already set up for interim engagements and entirely comfortable operating on that basis.

What Obelisk did

Into the role, as interim Legal Manager, Obelisk placed one of its returners from the Class of 2026 Obelisk Returners’ Programme. The consultant is a commercially astute legal counsel with over eleven years of experience advising organisations across the energy, technology and professional services sectors. Her expertise covers commercial contracting, corporate governance, data privacy and risk management, with a strong track record of balancing legal risk against business objectives in complex, international environments.

Our consultant was well placed for the brief. Her background in technology and data-intensive sectors gave her an immediate understanding of the cross-border data licensing, intellectual property and compliance questions central to the role. Her commercial instincts meant she could engage with deal structure and negotiation from the outset, while her broader governance experience equipped her to lead the risk management process and engage confidently with senior stakeholders.

The work

The bulk of the work over the three months was commercial contracting. She led negotiations end to end with our client’s partners and collaborators, advising on deal structure, risk allocation and commercial terms, and ensuring that agreements reflected both legal requirements and its values as an organisation. She also built out contractual frameworks, templates and playbooks that will serve the team well beyond the duration of the engagement itself.

Alongside the contracting work, she provided advice across data protection compliance and risk management. Intellectual property questions arose in the context of the client’s data licensing activities.

Why it worked

The engagement illustrates the value of flexible interim legal resourcing for organisations that need senior, specialist capability for a defined period without the commitment of a permanent hire. IBAT had a genuine and immediate need: a broad, technically demanding legal brief, a values-driven context and a part-time structure that sat outside most conventional approaches to legal recruitment.

Obelisk’s ability to place a legal consultant quickly, and with confidence in her suitability for both the legal and cultural requirements of the role, is a direct result of the depth and quality of the Obelisk network. For the client, the result was continuity of legal support across a complex and varied workload, delivered by a lawyer who could operate at senior level from day one, and strengthen the organisation’s capacity to respond to future legal demands.

The Obelisk Returners’ Programme, the only such initiative in the legal sector currently in place, succeeds in surfacing experienced lawyers who bring a combination of substantial professional expertise and fresh perspective, and who are motivated to re-engage with substantive work on terms that suit both them and the client.