In her data compliance practice, clients sometimes approach Attorney Maggie Meng with concerns about potential legal and regulatory risks.

When faced with such concerns, she usually starts at understanding the client's business background and assessing the nature and severity of the risks before offering recommendations. Some issues require immediate attention, others can be addressed according to a planned timeline, and still others may, upon closer examination, require no additional action at all. The key is to fully understand the issue at hand rather than allowing the client's level of anxiety to dictate the response.

She compares the relationship between a lawyer and a client to that between a doctor and a patient: you need to understand the situation first, and then determine the appropriate course of action. This requires a case-by-case assessment of where a company stands in its development, where its business is headed, which legal requirements it must satisfy, which compliance tasks should take priority, and which can be implemented in phases.  Effective compliance guidance must not only help businesses meet the relevant requirements step by step, but also explain the legal basis for each recommendation and establish clear priorities for corrective actions.

Such measured judgment comes from both professional experience and an understanding of the realities and pace of business operations.

Data compliance, particularly, demands this kind of balanced judgment. It is connected to legal rules and is also embedded in product design, technical architecture, organizational collaboration, and overseas operations. Companies need to advance their business while meeting legal requirements; lawyers need to explain the applicable rules and, in light of the business situation, propose advice that can actually be carried out. Having served as in-house counsel, Attorney Meng has firsthand experience of how companies understand and implement such advice.

From law firm to company and back to law firm, Attorney Meng has accumulated an understanding of both legal work and enterprise needs across different roles.

At the beginning of her career, she handled investment and financing work at a law firm. Later, through a secondment opportunity, she gradually shifted into in-house legal work.

This transition allowed her to observe from how legal work can align with and support business operations from the perspective of an enterprise.

In-house legal work introduced her to a different way of solving problems. At a law firm, young lawyers can easily spend long periods buried in documents; once at a company, she had to communicate repeatedly with the business, technology, finance, and other departments. After a contract was revised, the matter was often far from finished: how processes should be adjusted, who would bear the budget, how departments would coordinate with each other, and how legal requirements could be implemented without interrupting the business—these were all issues that the legal team still needed to continue handling.

She subsequently served as in-house counsel at both multinational and internet companies, gaining experience collaborating with colleagues from different countries and functions. In addition to analyzing Chinese legal requirements, she also needed to explain the local business and regulatory background to overseas colleagues, and to help headquarters and the China team develop a shared understanding.

As the business environment and the content of her work changed, she gradually reflected on the direction in which she wanted to further develop her expertise.

Then, she joined an artificial intelligence company and participated in building its legal and compliance system. Her responsibilities covered contracts, financing, intellectual property, data governance, and regulatory communications, giving her further insight into the evolving needs of technology companies at different stages of development.

This experience brought her closer to the heart of corporate decision-making. When management discussed new products, financing, and business strategies, the legal team was often expected to be part of the conversation. There, she had the rare opportunity to experience a technology start-up continuously tested by regulators, the market, and capital through repeated product R&D iterations.

As her responsibilities expanded, she began reflecting on how she wanted to further develop her legal expertise and where she hoped to focus her efforts in the next stage of her career.

She decided to return to a law firm and continue engaging in professional legal work.

Returning to a law firm meant rebuilding a practice and a team. She chose to start from the data compliance field in which she already had experience and which she hoped to continue deepening.

From in-house legal to external counsel, she needed to let clients gradually understand her professional capabilities and service approach.

In-house counsel already possess legal knowledge and are familiar with internal business. External lawyers need to demonstrate the specific issues on which they can provide further help; they cannot obtain trust merely on the basis of a previous title.

She chose to continue deepening her expertise in the data compliance field. As an external lawyer, she can continuously encounter diverse business scenarios across different industries. While strictly observing confidentiality obligations, she is able to reuse and adapt the methodologies and practical experience accumulated across projects to the analysis of different clients’ issues.

Data compliance has become an area where she has continued to build her expertise over time. In her early years working at a multinational company, she encountered European data protection rules; while working at the artificial intelligence company, she drew on relevant experience to gradually establish the company’s data governance foundation and adjust it in light of China’s business circumstances and applicable requirements.

After returning to the law firm, she gradually built client trust through concrete projects. When facing time-sensitive matters that required coordinating multiple parties, she emphasized timely response, in-depth analysis of issues, and converting recommendations into work that clients could actually advance.

After projects were completed, clients introduced new clients. The standards by which she had previously selected external lawyers in her capacity as general counsel were gradually written into her own working methods.

Facing the decision boundaries that founders care about, a general counsel needs an analytical approach that can coordinate business and management views internally, while a product owner is concerned about whether a feature can launch on schedule. Although it is the same rule, when an external lawyer faces different roles, the mode of expression, the pace of advancement, and the reasoning required for judgments all need to change accordingly.

Attorney Meng maintains curiosity about the industries and products of her clients. Understanding a product’s purpose, business processes, and commercial logic helps identify specific risks and makes the advice closer to the company’s actual needs.

Therefore, she has not stopped at looking for answers within the legal framework. She cares about how a rule will be understood once it enters the company, whether it can be accepted, and at which stage it will actually be carried out.

Companies going overseas make these issues more concrete and more urgent.

When handling overseas projects, Attorney Meng usually first helps the company sort out the compliance requirements of the applicable jurisdictions. For teams that have just entered an overseas market and are not yet familiar with local rules, the lawyer needs to explain the relevant requirements and, in light of the business arrangements, distinguish between work that must be completed immediately and work that can be advanced in phases.

Further down, the issues enter commercial architecture. Where overseas entities and data centers are located, whether local copies are needed, and which data can cross borders—these seemingly later compliance matters actually affect cloud service provider selection, product architecture, costs, and the speed of market entry.

She has also encountered situations in which clients preparing overseas business needed information about other types of suppliers. Beyond legal services, she provides references based on the information she has, or recommends that the client further contact relevant service providers. The specific choice of supplier and implementation plan still need to be evaluated by the client in light of its own business needs.

When a data breach or regulatory investigation occurs overseas, the company needs to promptly understand the applicable data security incident reporting requirements, processing deadlines, and materials that need to be prepared. Teams in the early stages of going overseas may not yet have accumulated local regulatory response experience. Lawyers can assist in sorting out the requirements, coordinating relevant personnel, and, when necessary, advancing the response work together with local professional advisors.

In financing and listing projects, data compliance may also become part of the review. Attorney Meng’s team has provided data compliance support under Chinese law for the listing projects of multiple clients. This type of work requires combining listing review requirements with the company’s actual situation, sorting out data processing activities, identifying risks, and assisting in implementing corresponding remediation.

Attorney Meng focuses on how compliance supports a company’s ongoing operations. For companies that are growing, raising financing, or going overseas, data compliance needs to be integrated into daily product and business processes, helping the company identify risks, meet applicable requirements, and prepare for subsequent operations and regulatory responses. Whether to enter a particular market or what commercial strategy to adopt remains a decision for the company to make based on various factors.

The development of AI tools has led some young lawyers to begin thinking about how their work will change. In the data compliance field, lawyers need to retrieve and analyze laws, standards, and regulatory trends. AI tools can assist with part of this work, but the output still needs to be verified and judged for whether it applies to the client’s specific circumstances.

Attorney Meng pays attention to whether AI tools can improve the efficiency of basic retrieval, information organization, and text processing. The premise for using tools is compliance with client confidentiality obligations and relevant data security requirements, as well as making prudent judgments regarding usage scenarios, input content, and tool output. The purpose of improving efficiency is to give lawyers more time to understand the business, analyze problems, and communicate solutions.

In her view, the hardest part of data compliance is making the rules truly enter corporate operations.

In specific projects, regulatory retrieval is only the starting point. Lawyers also need to verify business facts, analyze the scope of application of different rules, and explain the basis and limitations of recommendations. These judgments need to be combined with the project background and require full communication with business, technology, and product personnel; they cannot simply be replaced by answers generated by tools.

Therefore, she advises young lawyers, while consolidating their legal foundations, to continue learning technical and business knowledge and to improve their analytical, expressive, and coordination abilities. These have always been important requirements of legal work; the use of AI tools simply frees lawyers’ time from repetitive mechanical tasks while placing greater emphasis on cultivating these capabilities. Mastery of rules and understanding of business should support each other.

The conversation also touched on emerging roles such as “legal AI engineers” in the industry. In her view, technological development is bringing new work roles; young legal professionals can keep an eye on them and, based on their own abilities and interests, learn about the requirements of different positions.

From returning to a law firm on her own to gradually building a professional team, Attorney Meng began to face another challenge: the mentoring methods she experienced when she was young may no longer suit today’s young people.

As the team has gradually developed, she has also adjusted her mentoring approach: understanding each person’s strengths and learning pace, assigning appropriate tasks, and using feedback to help young lawyers improve their ability to handle issues independently.

She has also seen another form of leadership in Global Law Office’s Director Jinrong Liu: when difficulties arise, step forward first; when others need help, extend a hand first; when it is time to let others shine, push them to the front. She describes team configuration as completing a food ingredient formula in a laboratory. Whether “chemical reactions” can occur among members and between members and clients needs to be tested and adjusted through repeated collaboration.

In recent two years, meeting promising young lawyers and interns has excited her even more than winning new clients. She says they have a way of “lighting a fire” in her. She has developed a growth partner program for interns, providing structured mentorship and regular progress reviews, while taking care to understand each individual's strengths and pace of development.

Public information shows that Attorney Meng previously served as Co-Chair of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) China, and has long participated in the writing of standards, reports, and professional works. She co-authored Data Compliance: Introduction, Practice and Advancement (published in 2022) and Artificial Intelligence Business Compliance: System, Methods and Practice (published in 2025) with peers. For her, output is not packaging experience into conclusions, but repeatedly testing whether her own frameworks still hold up through teaching, writing, and discussions with peers.

What she is currently thinking about is how she and her team can grow together. As the capabilities of young lawyers improve, she also hopes to continue learning so as to provide them with more suitable tasks, support, and development opportunities.

Speaking of longer-term goals, she hopes that she and her team can provide more professional support to Chinese companies in the process of going overseas. Issues involving foreign laws and local regulation need to be handled in collaboration with local lawyers or advisors who possess the corresponding qualifications and experience. She looks forward to better understanding the requirements of different markets through such cooperation, helping clients explain their business situations and communicate compliance solutions, and also bringing the practical experience of Chinese legal professionals into international professional exchanges.

Achieving such goals requires continuous accumulation of professional experience and the cultivation of young lawyers who can understand business, conduct cross-cultural communication, and cooperate with overseas peers.

Experience in different positions has led Attorney Meng to continuously adjust her working methods. Today, she also incorporates this attitude of continuous learning into team development, hoping that young lawyers will form their own judgments through practice and gradually expand the work they are able to undertake.

Attorney Meng is a partner of Global Law Office based in Beijing. Her main practice areas are cyber security, data security, personal information and privacy protection, e-commerce and digital economy compliance. She has rich experience and professional skills in assisting clients to improve their data compliance capabilities and enhance strategies, interpreting data protection related legal/regulatory requirements, analyzing and evaluating the potential impact on business operations, guiding the personal information and data security management process, communicating and coordinating with government and regulatory agencies, and assisting in the implementation of security measures or data localization requirements.

Attorney Meng has nearly twenty years of experience in both in-house and external legal services. She previously worked at a well-known law firm, served as the chief counsel of a Fortune 500 multinational company and a global unicorn company, and as the general counsel, director of government relations affairs and data protection officer of a domestic AI unicorn company. Her clients include Tencent, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Agricultural Bank of China, Civil Aviation Information Group, PICC, Medtronic, Wuxi Biologics, Samsung, HP, LG, ZTE, Mengniu, Orion, Liby, Perfect World, iQiyi, Meituan, Ele.me, Zhihu, Ke, Jet Express, AutoNavi, Supor, China Merchants Group, Tianjin Port, Moutai Group, etc. Maggie Meng has also advised and provide data compliance training to senior managers of many state-owned enterprises.

Attorney Meng has been repeatedly recognized by leading international legal ranking institutions as a leading lawyer in data protection, TMT, fintech, and regulatory and compliance by The Legal 500; a particularly recommended lawyer in “Data Privacy Protection” and “TMT” by Chambers Greater China; a particularly recommended lawyer in cybersecurity and data compliance, consumer and retail, automotive and new energy, and digital economy by LEGALBAND; one of the ALB China Top 15 Cybersecurity and Data Protection Lawyers; and a distinguished lawyer in government and regulatory by asialaw and Benchmark Litigation, among other recognitions.

At The Table: Poise and Edge in a Complex World

Presented by UWIN Consultancy, At The Table is an in-depth dialogue series dedicated to women leaders across the legal and financial sectors. We believe that every nuanced balance struck between institutional rules and human insight deserves to be seen, articulated, and carried forward.

At The Table is an unscripted conversation. We invite women decision-makers navigating the frontiers of business and law to convene around a single table, exploring the realities that lie beyond court judgments and transaction documents: the trade-offs within strategic negotiations, the hesitations before critical decisions, and the endurance tested across market cycles. Our hope is that these authentic voices transcend the screen, providing clarity and resonance for those charting their own course.

Wherever you stand, you have the agency to reinterpret the rules and the prerogative to define your own direction. The poise and edge honed through deep professional practice move deliberately, speaking with quiet authority across every arena.

Claim your seat at the table.