Leadership
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As Head of Commercial Legal for Uber Australia and New Zealand, Sydney-based Fiona Chung is redefining what legal looks like in a business built on speed – turning it into a function that drives momentum, embraces technology, and partners with the business to move forward.
Legal has long been cast as the function that applies the brakes. Careful, considered, necessary – but rarely associated with speed. In a company like Uber, that model doesn’t hold. Operating across dozens of markets, launching products at pace and navigating constant regulatory change, the business demands something different from its legal team. Not just technical excellence, but responsiveness. Not just risk management, but momentum.
In this environment, Chung has built her reputation not simply as a highly capable in-house lawyer, but as a leader helping to redefine what legal looks like when it is fully embedded in the business it supports.
“When I moved in-house, it became apparent very quickly that legal teams are often perceived to be slow moving, conservative, and not very open to adopting new ideas,” she says. Rather than accept that perception, she challenged it.
Reframing legal as a driver of momentum
Chung’s starting point was not technology or structure, but mindset. If legal was to be seen differently, it had to think and communicate differently. One of the simplest but most effective shifts she introduced was in how advice is framed.
“Instead of saying ‘no, you can’t do this’, there’s a real opportunity to shift that to ‘yes, if you do this’,” she explains.
A subtle reframing, but one that carries weight. The legal position does not change; the risk is still identified and managed. What changes is the starting point of the conversation. Instead of closing options, legal becomes part
of the process of finding a way forward.
That shift matters in a fast-moving business. When legal is brought in early and positioned as a partner rather than a gatekeeper, it can influence outcomes before problems arise.
It moves from reacting to enabling.
“We want to be enablers for the business,” Chung says. “We want to work with them to help them grow in a way that’s sustainable.”
This philosophy underpins much of what she has built at Uber, and it reflects a broader evolution taking place across in-house legal teams globally.
Designing legal for speed, not just safety
Mindset alone, however, is not enough. For legal to operate at the speed of the business, the systems and processes behind it must evolve as well. When Chung joined Uber, legal workflows were relatively simple, largely because the team itself was small. As both the business and the legal function grew, that simplicity quickly gave way to complexity. Work arrived through multiple channels. Visibility was limited. Prioritization became harder. Like many in-house teams, legal risked becoming overwhelmed not by the work itself, but by how that work was managed.
Chung’s response was to step back and rethink the fundamentals. “I think often we spend too much time just doing the work but not taking a step back and saying, how can we do things better?” she says.
That pause led to a series of changes, beginning with a more structured workflow. By introducing a centralized system, her team was able to capture all incoming work, allocate it more effectively, and create greater transparency for both legal and the business.
“When work just gets sent to a lawyer’s inbox, things get lost,” she says.
The impact was immediate. Turnaround times improved, workloads became more balanced, and the business gained clearer visibility over how legal support was being delivered. Just as importantly, it created a more consistent experience, something that becomes increasingly critical as organizations scale.
“The goal is always to keep the deal momentum and get deals done faster.”
Fiona Chung, Head of Commercial Legal at Uber ANZ
What made those changes effective, however, was not just the design of the system, but the way they were introduced. Chung is clear that process transformation only works when people come with you.
“If you’re the only person driving change, but everyone else is not coming on the journey, it’s really hard for that process to stick,” she says.
That meant building buy-in, not just within her own team but across the business. Rather than positioning new workflows or tools as “legal improvements,” the focus was on how they would benefit the wider organization: faster turnaround times, greater transparency, and a more predictable experience.
“I think they’re always happy that we are actually thinking about how we can better service them,” she notes.
Framed in those terms, the conversation shifts. Legal is no longer asking the business to adapt to it; it is showing how a modern legal function can make the business itself more effective.
From there, the focus shifted to maintaining deal momentum. Chung’s team has been developing and trialling redline tools designed to reduce turnaround times and ensure consistency across contracts. “The goal is always to keep the deal momentum and get deals done faster,” she says.
Yet even here, Chung is careful to distinguish between efficiency and judgment. Technology can accelerate the process, but it does not replace the need for human decision-making.
“People will have different ways of addressing a risk. And that’s when human judgment is valuable,” she says.
Perhaps more tellingly, she points out that many of the delays in deals have little to do with legal complexity at all. “The biggest hidden friction is probably how teams work together,” she says.
Misalignment, unclear roles, and poor communication can all slow progress. Addressing those issues – through clearer workflows, better visibility, and stronger collaboration – often has a greater impact than any single tool.
The AI shift and the future of legal leadership
If workflow and process define how legal operates today, artificial intelligence is beginning to shape what it will look like tomorrow.
Chung is pragmatic about its potential. AI, she says, is already demonstrating value in high-volume, repetitive tasks where speed and consistency matter. “AI can handle really large volumes of information at much faster speeds.”
“We want to be enablers for the business. We want to work with them to help them grow in a way that’s sustainable.”
Fiona Chung, Head of Commercial Legal at Uber ANZ
But she is equally clear about its limitations. Legal work, particularly in a business like Uber, is rarely purely mechanical. It involves context, nuance, and an understanding of real-world impact. Elements that remain difficult to automate.
“AI can do the first pass, but there is an element of judgment that is still quite difficult for AI to completely replace,” she explains.
Rather than viewing AI as a threat, Chung sees it as a shift in emphasis. As technology takes on more of the repetitive work, the value of legal teams will increasingly lie in oversight, interpretation, and strategic thinking.
That shift places a new responsibility on leaders. “I think it’s really important to learn to work with it and use it to your advantage,” she says.
For those who engage with it, AI offers an opportunity to become more effective, more efficient and more valuable to the business. For those who resist it, the risk is not immediate replacement, but gradual irrelevance.
What Chung’s experience at Uber illustrates is not just how legal can adapt, but why it must. In a business environment defined by speed and complexity, the traditional model of legal as a reactive function is increasingly out of step. What is emerging in its place is something more integrated and more dynamic – a function that understands the business deeply, communicates clearly, and uses both process and technology to remove friction rather than add to it.
That evolution does not require abandoning the core principles of legal practice. If anything, it reinforces them. Judgment, clarity, and trust remain central. What changes is how those principles are applied, and how legal positions itself within the organization.
In that sense, the shift is less about transformation in the abstract and more about direction. Legal is not stepping away from its role. Rather, it is moving into a different one.
And in a company built on movement, that may be exactly where it needs to be.
