The Activity of Corporate Legal Departments of Uzbekistan In Ensuring the Methodological and Normative Work of The Company: Taking Advanced Foreign Experience into Account

Drawing on a comparative-legal methodology, the article examines the methodological and norm-setting (internal rule-making) function of corporate legal departments in Uzbekistan against advanced foreign practice in the USA, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, South Africa and the CIS/Central Asian states. Thirteen systemic problems are identified and substantiated – from the regulatory uncertainty of in-house counsel status and the absence of in-house legal privilege to an underdeveloped compliance function, a reactive model of legal work and a digitalisation gap. The analysis relies on statistical data of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), ISO standards (ISO 37301, ISO 31000), the G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance 2023, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the case law of the CJEU (Akzo Nobel, AM & S), the US Supreme Court (Upjohn) and the ECtHR (Michaud). Ten reform directions are proposed in the context of Uzbekistan’s ongoing legal reforms.

Legal department, in-house counsel, methodological work

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