My name is Milica Antic, and I am the Legal Lead for Google in the Netherlands. Before joining Google, I worked as an attorney in private practice for ten years. I started out in a general civil litigation practice, but over time, I gravitated toward the intersection of tech and law. I ultimately ended up conducting and leading groundbreaking lawsuits that helped shape the early years of internet law. I joined Google in 2012, when the internet was hardly regulated and Google still felt like a startup from time to time.
In my role, I act as the primary legal point of contact and strategic advisor for our local cross-functional teams, leadership, and external stakeholders. I handle a highly diverse portfolio, overseeing the legal operations and strategy for our Dutch market. This encompasses navigating high-stakes as well as low-brow litigation, and managing public policy challenges at the intersection of legal, regulatory, and reputational risk.
What I love most about my role is its immense diversity. On any given day, I transition from instructing outside counsel on sophisticated litigation strategies, to stepping up to represent Google’s perspective in parliamentary hearings on algorithms and digital governance.
Google’s mission
Google’s mission remains to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Locally, Google Netherlands focuses on supporting the digital ecosystem, driving innovation, and helping Dutch businesses and partners grow through our ads platform, cloud infrastructure, and search technologies. Right now, a massive part of our activity and focus is centered on responsibly developing and deploying AI to empower users and businesses.
The Legal Team
Locally, we operate as a very compact, ‘lean and mean’ team, embedded within Google’s broader international legal structures. Because our team is small but the scope of our business is huge, we must be very agile and strategic. Because of our lean setup, our daily work spans an incredibly broad spectrum: from handling incoming user complaints, to working with the business to close complex commercial deals with publishers, from managing ads-safety initiatives, to defending the company in class actions. An essential part of our team’s job is the ability to operate across functions. We work hand-in-hand with the business, and with Government Affairs, Communications and Trust & Safety teams. “Hot topics” for us currently include navigating the rise of class actions and other mass claims that are third-party funded, ensuring compliance with EU regulations like the DSA, and, of course, heavily experimenting with and integrating AI into our own workflows.
Throwing AI at it?!
Currently, one of the biggest challenges is the volume and complexity of legal work have increased hugely, while at the same time, the pressure to work more cost-efficiently has never been higher. You can’t just solve that by throwing AI at it. It requires creativity, courage, and it fundamentally changes our relationship with Outside Counsel—we have to rethink how we collaborate and drive value.
Another huge challenge for a legal team today is figuring out how to deeply integrate AI into our daily work. It has to go much further than just adopting yet another software application; it needs to become an integral part of everything we do, up to and including our strategic thought processes. Integrating AI at that level requires time, constant iteration, and a massive shift in mindset. To tackle this, we foster a culture within the team where experimentation is encouraged, and where we view AI not as a threat or a simple shortcut, but as a collaborative intellectual partner.
Adaptability is key
Adaptability is key. The adaptability required from us right now is enormous. By the very nature of our profession, lawyers often tend to ‘play it safe’ and avoid risks, which makes navigating this rapid technological shift quite difficult. My message to the GCN community is that we need the courage and creativity to lean into this discomfort. If we want to stay effective and relevant, we must be willing to experiment and rethink how we practice law.
Disconnect and recharge
Outside of the fast-paced legal environment at Google, I make it a priority to disconnect and recharge. Sports and spending time outdoors are a lifeline for me. I love tennis, hiking, bird watching, and discovering new music. I also love running—I have run a few marathons in the past, though since our kids were born, I don’t have the bandwidth to invest in long training hours anymore.
Interestingly, while many runners listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks during their long runs, I have a strict rule never to put anything in my ears while spending time outdoors. Running is the only moment in my life when I am completely free from distractions. I don’t meditate or practice mindfulness in the traditional sense, but running without headphones serves as an active meditation, allowing me to be truly connected, fully aware of my surroundings, and tuned into my own body working.
Admittedly, with a young family, finding the time to actually sit down and listen to music at home, at a venue, or a festival is very challenging. These days, our household soundtrack is mainly Kinderen voor Kinderen – any attempt to play anything else is met with loud protest! Having said that, dancing and singing along with the kids is the absolute best antidote to stress.
