Nicole Battistini-Kohler

Why NBK Legal

The 2025/26 wave of EU regulation forces something most organisations aren't prepared for: integrated thinking. DORA usually fails on team dynamics, not on technology. Valuation discounts in M&A often have a regulatory origin, not a financial one. Governance failure has a system logic, not culprits.

I founded NBK Legal because I know these intersections from my own experience — as someone who sat inside regulated companies and knows where frameworks fail, because they were written before the meeting derailed.

That's the real difference: I've been on both sides — the firm and, afterwards, board-level responsibility for what I had previously advised on. And by now I'm building myself: as a founder I carry the entrepreneurial responsibility I otherwise advise on — the same risk, the same decisions. This combination of Big Law, board-level experience, building internal governance systems and founding my own company is unusual. It's why my work products — memos, matrices, cockpits — carry the handwriting of someone who has to prepare and answer for decisions herself.

And what interests me beyond the single mandate: what becomes of you and your company. I most like working with the same people over years — and it pleases me when they grow through the shared work.

What this practice stands on

NBK Legal is new as a firm. The work it stands on is not.

Seven years of board-level legal at Xempus AG, Munich (pension tech, EU-regulated): lead on three financing rounds in 2018, 2020 and 2022 — a Series D of €70 million with Goldman Sachs Asset Management as lead investor. Building and running the legal department. M&A lead. Acquisition of a subsidiary in 2023, a carve-out with share swap in 2024. Building an ISMS that has carried the ISO 27001 certificate for years; a compliance management system with a whistleblower channel; risk management for the executive board; data protection professionalised from the ground up. In 2024 I additionally took over and stabilised the (non-legal) IT department on an interim basis.

Before that: two years as Senior Legal Counsel and Data Protection Officer at DaVita Kidney Care, Hamburg — GDPR roll-out in an international healthcare setting. Ten years at Taylor Wessing Munich in Corporate / M&A, tech, life sciences (6.5 of them as partner). Career start at Linklaters Munich and Walder Wyss Zurich.

„Exceptionally profound and comprehensive expertise, well beyond her own field. She solves difficult tasks at high speed, in a sustainable, conceptually outstanding and constructive way. With foresight, she conveys an overall view of the opportunities and risks that matter to the company.“

Malte Dummel, Co-CEO Xempus AG · employment reference, 31 August 2025

External advisers see symptoms. In-house sees why the measures don't take hold. The method of this practice grew out of that experience.

Career

• since September 2025
  Founder & Adviser

  NBK Legal · Munich

  Boutique advisory at the intersection of regulation, technology and M&A. Focus: DORA, NIS2, AI Act, operational resilience, investment & exit readiness, governance architecture. Building an openly accessible body of knowledge (Swiss Room, Wissensraum).

• 2020–2025
  General Counsel, Senior Vice President

  xbAV / Xempus · Munich

  Responsibility for all legal and compliance matters of a high-growth insurtech. Building and leading the legal function, legal lead on several financing rounds, contract architecture, data protection, insurance-supervisory law.

• 2018–2020
  Head of Legal

  xbAV · Munich

  Building the legal function, accompanying the company's growth and structural change.

• 2016–2018
  Senior Legal Counsel and Data Protection Officer

  DaVita Kidney Care · Hamburg

  GDPR roll-out in an international healthcare setting.

• 2006–2016
  Lawyer and Partner (from 2010)

  Taylor Wessing · Munich

  Ten years in an international commercial law firm, 6.5 of them as partner. Focus: corporate law, M&A, transactions, venture capital, joint ventures.

• before that
  Lawyer / Associate

  Firms in Munich, Zurich and Basel

  Building a broad practice base in commercial law — Swiss, German, cross-border.

Education & admissions

The fields NBK Legal works in

The focus is on rule-sets where technical, organisational and legal questions interlock — and where standard answers aren't enough. They're usually the way in; the real question is which decision underneath has to hold.

How NBK Legal works

I don't believe in templates that replace judgment. The standard answer to regulatory complexity is standardisation — checklists, dashboards, frameworks. But what is a board to do when an AI system is formally compliant and still carries a risk no one wants to answer for?

My approach starts with the reality I find — not the ideal model. I build structures that hold under pressure. That means less documentation, more capacity to decide.

More on that under Method — or through the open content in the Wissensraum and Swiss Room.

Voices from colleagues, clients and mandates

As you read, watch for what keeps recurring: overview, structure, capacity to decide, collaboration across team boundaries, delivery under the highest pressure. These voices describe how I work.