Bjarne Philip Tellmann is a visiting clinical lecturer in law at Yale Law School. Previously, he served as founding general counsel and member of the executive committee at Haleon, a FTSE 20 company and the world’s largest consumer health business. At Haleon, he led the legal and compliance work associated with the company’s demerger from GSK, among the largest and most complex corporate separations in recent U.K. corporate history. Previously, as chief legal officer and general counsel at Pearson, a FTSE 100 global education company, Tellmann redesigned and digitized the legal department, reducing costs by more than 40% while improving service quality. He has also held senior leadership roles across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S. at Coca-Cola, Aramco, Kimberly-Clark, and the law firms Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and White & Case LLP.
A scholar of leadership, innovation, and digital transformation, Tellmann teaches and publishes regularly on the future of the legal profession and the impact of artificial intelligence on legal services. Tellmann is a senior visiting fellow at The London School of Economics (LSE), a member of the faculty of the Global General Counsel Academy at King’s College London, and the General Counsel Academy in The Netherlands. He has been an academic visitor at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law, and he has lectured at institutions including Harvard, LSE, and Columbia. He also advises leading law firms and in-house departments on organizational excellence and digital transformation in the legal industry through his consultancy, FjordStream Advisors.
Tellmann is the author of “Building an Outstanding Legal Team: Battle-Tested Strategies from a General Counsel” (Globe Law and Business, 2017) and the forthcoming “Law in the Era of AI: Clients, Firms, and the Future of the Legal Industry,” which explores how AI is reshaping legal services and examines how AI-enabled corporate clients are driving transformation across the legal industry.
An alumnus of Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago Law School, The London School of Economics, and Boston University, Tellmann has received numerous honors, including General Counsel of the Year (British Legal Awards), Legends in the Law (Burton Awards), Chambers’ GC Influencers Global 100, and Legal Era’s GC of the Year.
