Event Report

On the 20th of October, the Legal 500, Margherita Birri and David Freeman hosted the Women in Law Peru Summit 2022 in Lima. 

The first panel was a beautiful conversation between Cristina Jaramillo, lawyer and ontological coach, and Nicole Perret, cultural transformation consultant and coach. The audience was particularly engaged thanks to the interactive debate they both entertained. The focus of the discourse rotated around empathy. Often overlooked, this is a central tool to create a solid business with a cohesive team. As Cristina pointed out, good leadership starts first by looking at oneself. We need to connect with our emotions, own them and overcome the myth that vulnerability is equal to weakness, echoes Nicole. On the contrary, it is through vulnerability that people feel the most connected. We are emotional beings. However, we live in an era where we focus on the outside, not on the inside. Entering a process of deep self-knowledge requires courage. ‘People won’t remember what you said but they will remember how you made them feel’.  It is also important, they continue, to listen without judgment or without feeling the need of responding straight away.

The panel leaves us with the message of incorporating emotional intelligence in the exercise of such an important profession, like the legal world, in an era full of challenges for humanity. Above everything, it reminds us of the importance of empathy to create a better environment, regardless of where we are.

Following this wave, the second panel opened with a very important question: ‘there is diversity but…..is there inclusion?’. A company works better when its culture is diversified, everyone benefits from it. As Milagros Gomez Sanchez, Legal director of corporate and legal affairs at Toyota pointed out, ‘we are whole beings and cannot separate one part from the other’ such as the personal life from the work life. The panelists reiterated the importance of emotions, and of being allowed to make mistakes without the fear of being judged.

They expressed how the pandemic doubled the workload, and how difficult this has been especially for women. Another important angle this panel considered was the generational change, the fact that nowadays younger generations are more ‘fluid’, less committed in such a fast-paced world full of inputs and gave us advice on how to have them more engaged. They reminded us of the task of bringing gender equality inputs into the legal practice as well as keeping up to date with what happens ‘on the street’ worldwide, everyday.

Finally, thank you to Estudio Olaechea for sponsoring this event.

In association with...