Practitioner, not vendor
I have built and run these tools inside a legal team, not sold them. Advice starts from the workflow as it runs, not from a product roadmap.
Asim Serdar Yilmaz: a career built inside regulated markets
20+ years in legal and regulatory work
Previously Amazon · eBay · Philip Morris International · White & Case
Statutory Board Director and Authorised Representative
Ankara Bar
I am Asim Serdar Yilmaz, a senior legal and regulatory affairs leader based in Istanbul. Across more than 20 years of legal and regulatory work, most of it in-house, I have advised global technology, consumer and regulated businesses across Turkey and the Middle East: retail and marketplace, streaming and media, advertising, payments, data and IP. My work tends to sit where a business wants to move quickly and a regulator wants to move carefully.
I started in private practice at White & Case in Ankara from 2005 to 2008, on cross-border M&A, privatisations and IP in regulated sectors. From there I moved in-house: first to Philip Morris International from 2008 to 2012, a strict, high-scrutiny compliance environment, across the Middle East and then in global compliance from its Lausanne headquarters; then into e-commerce at eBay's Turkey and MENA business from 2012 to 2019, and from 2019 to 2026 as Legal Director for Amazon Turkey. In 2026 I moved from legal into regulatory affairs, and today I lead the regulatory agenda within the corporate affairs function of a global group in a highly regulated industry.
The thread through all of it is regulated markets. I have spent years turning regulatory ambiguity into paths a business can actually take, and building what I think of as "yes, if" guardrails: controls that let a team move at speed while protecting the enterprise over the long term. Much of that has meant sitting across the table from competition authorities, data protection regulators, media regulators and ministries.
The other current chapter is LEXSAS, the AI legal-tech venture I founded in 2026, focused on legal workflow automation and advisory. It blends legal directorship, regulatory affairs, corporate affairs and public policy, now paired with hands-on AI governance. It grew out of years of building generative AI tooling for legal work, on AWS Bedrock among other platforms, and of seeing where adoption succeeds and where it quietly fails. This site is where I write about that intersection of law, regulation and AI, as informational consultancy rather than legal representation.
EXPERIENCE
More than twenty years across the table from regulators
Those years include statutory board roles and leading legal functions through investigations, licensing questions and market entry. What I say about AI stands on this practitioner ground.
Career
2026 to present
Founder
LEXSAS, Istanbul
- An AI legal-tech venture: legal workflow automation and advisory for legal and regulatory teams, with privacy, IP and governance guardrails built in from the start.
2026 to present
Regulatory Affairs Director
A global group in a highly regulated consumer industry, Istanbul
- Functional lead for the regulatory agenda within corporate affairs in one of the most heavily regulated consumer sectors: strategy, horizon scanning and government relations support for the Turkish market.
2019 to 2026
Legal Director, Technology, E-Commerce and Media; Board Director
Amazon Turkey, Istanbul
- End-to-end counsel for retail, marketplace and media, and representation before RTUK, the Turkish Competition Authority, the Ministry of Trade, the KVKK Authority and the Central Bank.
- Statutory Board Director for multiple Amazon entities, including Prime Video Turkey and Project Kuiper; co-developed GenAI legal tooling on AWS Bedrock inside the legal function.
2012 to 2019
Head of Legal and Business Ethics Officer, Middle East and North Africa
eBay Turkey (GittiGidiyor), Istanbul
- Regional legal, public policy and business ethics leadership for marketplace operations across Turkey and MENA, including a regulator-approved exemption model for marketplace payments.
2008 to 2012
Regional Legal Counsel and Company Secretary, Middle East; Legal Counsel, Global Functions
Philip Morris International, Dubai and Lausanne
- Advised commercial teams across 12 Middle East markets under strict advertising bans; company secretary for regional entities and global anti-corruption governance from the Lausanne headquarters.
2005 to 2008
Associate
White & Case LLP, Ankara
- Cross-border M&A, privatisations and IP in regulated sectors including telecoms, energy and banking.
Education
A law degree from Ankara University, an MSc in Internet Business from Mercy College in New York, and executive education at Harvard Business School; more recently, AI Law, Policy and Governance at the London School of Economics.
Ankara Bar Association. Languages: Turkish (native), English (fluent).
If any of this is close to a question you are working on, write to me.
APPROACH
How I work
Guardrails that enable speed
Well-designed controls let a team move quickly while protecting the business over the long term.
Measurable pilots, human review
Every AI deployment should begin as a pilot with a defined measure of success and a person owning the output. If it cannot show what it changed, it has not earned a wider rollout.
“The useful answer is rarely a flat yes or no; it is yes, if.”
Asim Serdar Yilmaz, Founder