Category: Interviews

Diageo, the global leader in alcohol beverages, with an outstanding collection of over 200 brands enjoyed in more than 180 countries around the world, is a technology- and digitalisation-open company. For human resources, we use a platform on which every employee is able to manage their own information, holidays and professional development. IT and HR have developed a learning platform called ‘Learning Hub’. As I see it, you develop as a professional through being proactive about learning new things, and there is an incredible number of courses, trainings and learnings that you can take on this platform during your Diageo career.

There are many learnings and trainings that our corporate team have developed and uploaded to the platform that are related to legal issues, for example, compliance, or ethics or on specific legal issues. We are also developing local learnings and training, as a complement to global platforms.

In legal, we have been working on a platform for contract management. At the moment it is quite simple: you can upload your contract, control duration of the contract, who is the contractor – it’s a summary of the full contract system that allows you to understand when a contract is going to end, and to do whatever you need in terms of requests and keep control of all documents. You have all the elements that you need in order to take decisions.

However, in Colombia, the idea for the future, if possible, is to apply artificial intelligence to this. We are starting this process by developing models of contracts that the system can match with the requests of our clients. For example, if a brand manager needs a contract for sponsoring an event, the idea is not to go to the lawyer and spend one or two hours trying to explain what they need and so on, but to match the models we are creating with the client’s requirements and let them fill the gaps in those contracts. This means taking some risks, of course. But once they have done that, the system will be able to issue the contract with just one previous reading by a lawyer in order to correct small things. That’s a way of trying to make it much more proactive, much more predictive and much simpler.

If this goes well, the idea is to start applying artificial intelligence not just to get the information, but also to ask questions regarding what kind of contract is needed in order to really fulfil expectations. We are developing that tool by first getting the basics.

We also have a very simple software that we use globally to control our legal processes. It’s not rocket science – you submit information into the software and it organises processes according to risk and the information you have given. But the idea is not simply to stop there: I dream of having a general platform that could connect with law firms. You would give information to the system and obtain information directly from the firms, getting the information in an organised and structured way.

Technology is one of those elements that will change the world, especially in legal. Everybody believes that you need a lawyer for doing contracts and that’s not true. You need a lawyer to do the models and to be critical – what are the minimum factors in a negotiation? But if you have artificial intelligence systems developed to do the contracts according to all of the criteria that the lawyer has given, that will change the way we see contract management.

And what is probable is that in the future, many law firms will have to change their way of working. Today, we rely on their name and reputation; you hire a lawyer because he’s important, he can deal with your problems and can give you the right answers. But in Latin America, jurisprudence and judicial decisions have been very clear in the last ten or 20 years and we have some trends that are already recognised. Of course, every problem is different, but if you recognise those trends, you don’t have to ask lawyers for new concepts, you just have to ask them for probable general concepts that you could apply to your specific problem. This means changing the whole system, their way of working and the way they make profits, and I don’t know if law firms are ready to do that or if they are happy thinking about it. In Latin America, and in Colombia specifically, they haven’t done anything about it, at least nothing we can identify. There are just the typical law firms that have a hierarchical structure of partner, associate, staff and so on. They have the old-fashioned way of working and trying to change that is like trying to break a bargain. They do not care much about innovation and, I have to say, it’s frustrating, because in-house legal teams are far ahead of the legal firms in terms of using technology and using these kinds of tools.

When it comes to technological disruption in-house, it’s all about the way you construct the culture. It’s not just in the legal team, it’s through the whole company, the whole organisation. I believe the first step is constructing a culture of digitalisation, automation and using technology so that people understand that these are tools that can make life easier and better. They are not competition, they will not replace a lawyer – in my team, every person is important. What I want to be able to do is to free capabilities – give my lawyers freedom to work on other issues. If you have a lawyer spending time doing contracts, that’s not right! You need to liberate, create time for them to do all those things and be able to develop other skills. What technology can do is become a partner in that development – it’s their best ally for that. If people start to understand that technology is a partner and not an enemy or a possible substitute for their job, that will change the progress of what we have been doing.

Being honest, this is not easy at all. You have to be open-minded, you have to be ready to assume some challenges, and you have to be able to unlearn. You have to try to forget some things that you have learnt in order to learn new things that could help you to improve. We need to develop leaders on these issues, and my challenge is to become a leader. I probably won’t be the one that will develop the systems but I could be the one who can push everyone to understand that adopting these kind of systems is a good thing.

You might not be able to find what you want because it’s not yet developed, but you can find someone able to develop it. But in order to find that ally, you have to be really open minded. They need information that might be confidential, or to understand problems that normally you would not talk about outside the company. But once you understand they are an ally and give them trust, everything goes more easily.

I think the legal profession is very far behind other professional service sectors when it comes to technology. I believe no one has taken the time to think about changing the way of working that is normal for lawyers. The lawyer has always been seen as the guy who has all the knowledge to fix problems and people believe that technology won’t be something that lawyers could understand or that would be interesting for them. In some ways they are right, because lawyers are difficult people, especially when you talk about law firms – I am a lawyer, so I can say that! I believe there is a kind of natural restriction in the minds of people, but I believe that could change. It’s about the way we construct culture – and we need to start talking about this much more.

I believe many new and young lawyers are thinking how to change the way law firms and in-house teams are working and, in the medium term – in two or five years – we will see some changes.

I think technology in the in-house department is not an option anymore. Because, as you know, all companies are cost and profit-driven. So, at some point, the question will be on the table: ‘What is cheaper for me’ or ‘What is more efficient for me?’ To have an in-house department, or just to go find a law firm and try to push down the prices? So, I think the technology will give us, as in house lawyers, more possibilities in order to argue that it’s a good idea to have in-house lawyers. I think every company must start to interact with these new technologies to try to develop an idea or a practice to use that. In my case, of course, I’m trying to bring these new technologies and ideas and be open to the market but, otherwise, I try to bring on board young lawyers with these new ideas, who of course can contribute to the development of the legal department.

We deal a lot with in-house software that manages the areas of litigation, arbitration and conflict management. We focus on these areas because of the amount of litigation that we have. For example, in 2009 there was a drop down of oil prices and, as we are a construction and maintenance company, we had to let go of many people because some of our contracts were shut down. That brought us over 100 cases of litigation. So, taking that into account, and also that we have almost 1,200 active suppliers at the moment, we need to find a way to manage this and try to be more strategic.

We have been working in this project almost two years, I believe. At the beginning, there was a lot of data mining. We tried to obtain as much as data as possible from all our contracts and litigation: the value of the litigation, the name of the parties to the contract, the duration of the contract, the purpose, scope and everything else. We did all of this data mining and uploaded it into the software.

At the moment, the software gives me an idea of when, according to the data, is the most proper moment for me to settle. So, this technology gives me all the tools to make a decision and, of course, to manage this big amount of issues.

Before five years, the only contact with technology from our legal department was the cloud and the files’ source. We PDF’d and scanned all the documents and uploaded them, but there was no ‘correct’ way to manage them. In case you wanted to search for a specific file, there was no way to do it. You needed to spend five or ten minutes to find it – if you found it.

The first challenge was to try to obtain budget. It’s not common for in-house – maybe for firms it’s trendier – but for in house, it’s quite new to have this managed software, and it’s newer that you want to create your own software. So, trying to sell the idea to the CEO in order for them to see the benefits that it eventually will bring to the company was really hard. But I can say for sure: today, they can see those benefits and the company is willing to invest more in software within the legal department. Our software was obtained through our in-house IT department, and we spent almost two years working closely between them and our legal department to create this software.

In terms of ethical issues, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this – in Mexico, when you have a labour case, mainly it’s because the former employee feels that he was entitled to receive a bigger compensation. Some cases, they are right; some cases, they are wrong. But that’s purely mathematics. Even if they are right or wrong, my duty as a head of legal is to see the best interests of the company. So, there are some cases that they are right in asking for these extra compensations. But the software might recommend that I can settle with them for a lower figure that they are entitled to. So, that is the ethical issue. Because in some part, I want to, and it’s my duty with the company, and on the other hand of course, I want to be fair with the former employees. So, that is an ethical issue that I am seeing as a result of this software.

Right now, we are planning for next year to add a new part of the software for insurance management, and also for customs management. For customs, we often import the vessels, and our import permit might be valid for six months, seven months, one year or ten years. You have to renew that permit or you will be fined. So, we are thinking to add this part to the software, in order to have a reminder previous to the due date in order for us to renew the permit. Regarding the insurance, it’s the same. We cannot have our vessels or operations without insurance, so the idea is to create these new parts of the software to manage that.

Both external lawyers and in-house teams have to adapt to new processes. But, at some point, we ask for external lawyers to fit our software: we ask them to do it, but we understand that we are not their only client. So it takes time for them to fit the software, and if the software is not with the proper data, we cannot take the proper decision. So it can be difficult – it’s gymnastics. At some point, we have to work on that, and eventually it will be really natural.

Historically, lawyers are not used to using technology in our profession, and the definition of a lawyer has been to do things the old-fashioned way – with paper, or e-mail. Before we took the decision to develop the software in house, we looked at many options within the market, and we noticed that most of the software was being developed in order to manage, first of all, the billing hours for external lawyers and, secondly, to manage contract drafting – and that’s it.

New generations of young lawyers have a different set-up, a different mindset. I think lawyering is a little bit behind if you compare it with other professions, such as marketing. I think these new generations will push harder to improve new technologies in the law practice.

After more than a decade focused on the chemical and pharmaceutical business while working for Bayer, formerly as a tax lawyer and overseeing all the legal areas over the years, I have recently decided to take on an opportunity that has changed my daily routine by moving to General Mills to be part of a great team, working now in the food business. I am now responsible for providing the direction for all legal and compliance matters across our company’s businesses in Latin America. In order to do that, I have a team of six people within the region, and we are now deeply discussing, testing and making a lot of use of technology at General Mills. We are still evaluating tools for litigation – and with my previous experience as head of litigation at Bayer, for me, it is something the company can really make benefit of by having the right data and cost control while using this kind of technology. Nowadays, there is no way you can manage a legal department without making use of technology – and this is for contract, litigation and billing purposes – there is no way you can stay out of it. I am a big believer in technology, and I always try to foster this new technology right at its foundation. So as a business, we are, right now, testing and always looking for new technology, and hopefully we will get it implemented.

In the last three years, the legal sector has offered more in terms of developing technology, and is making real progress. Before that happened, I would say that it was a little behind. I think the legal market is going to keep up this technological momentum, but when compared to other markets, such as finance, we are still behind. I am a big believer that technology helps to streamline and illuminate company overheads. Legal professionals should take technology as part of their job: there is no way you can work in legal [or any other area] without taking technology as part of your job. It will become more and more relevant. You cannot stay away. You have to be prepared. There is no way you can manage a legal department without making use of technology.

For contract management, the use of technology has been helping companies here in Latin America a lot. We have an in-house system for contact management where you can easily pull out a predetermined contract, which dramatically reduces your overhead of in-house lawyers working on standard contracts. This is very helpful in terms of budgeting and overhead production. You are also able to control the workflow within the company: from the start of the contract, when the business unit is negotiating the contract, to the signing of this contact – which goes electronically and by hand. We are also implementing digital signatures for contracts.

For litigation, there has been a lot of upgrading within the systems available in the market – software companies are designing litigation tools: it works both in case management, and in billing. Therefore, you can manage the case and also have your external information managed within the system. This is helpful in both reducing your overhead externally and controlling your case. In the past, companies were used to receiving reports by copying and pasting information into a system. But now we are finding that external law firms are inputting every piece of information on the case, rather than having in-house counsel do this. This technology is making the work of in-house counsel easier.

For budgeting purposes, there has been an evolution in our work because we can now predict cases. You can build your budget on the actual number of cases you have ongoing. You are also able to control the hourly case rate on a case-by-case basis. This brings about more security and predictability on the existing provisions you may have.

I have been implementing new technology within my legal team for a while. It has been more than 12 or 13 years since I began upgrading systems and providing new technology to my team. Like I said, I am a big believer in technology. However, there are two big challenges you face when implementing new technology.

Firstly, the in-house team must be ready to make the change – it demands a lot of work, especially in terms of preparing for change. This requires a lot of work in standardising the documents and the archives for a new system first. You must make sure you are communicating the benefits of such technology to your team, in order to get everyone involved and committed to the project. This is a major internal challenge that you and your in-house team may face.

The second challenge concerns external counsel: when you are outsourcing your services to a large number of outside counsels, it is natural that each and every law firm uses their own system and has their own routine. It is difficult to make sure that the external company is using your system or actually providing the information that your company requires. So, when looking into systems, or any new technology, it’s always highly recommended to integrate as much as possible the targeted solution with the existing technology available so no disruption is caused to your routine.

In my view, AI is going to disrupt the legal profession. In the past, people used to instruct lawyers for basic and simple cases. We had to answer the phone multiple times a day to address standard topics and answer these questions. But now, people are able to interact with a machine where their questions are answered and standard contracts are drafted, which saves companies a lot in terms of in-house counsel overhead needs. I think this is something that is already a reality and it will change dramatically the way we interact with our business. AI is our reality if we wish to develop a more standard and simplified way of building documents and contracts for legal work. This is already a reality and something that I would be happy to have the chance to be implementing within the next five years.

Will I lose my job to a computer in the future? This is a question that all lawyers are asking themselves. But, when it comes to views and interpretation of all nuances concerning either contracts or litigation, I still believe a machine will not be able to do this work. A human will always be required to do the job. Although, I do think for less complex things like mass litigation and standard contracts, I have no doubt that these are going to be performed by machines and may pose a threat to people currently performing these jobs. But, for high profile and specific cases, I still firmly believe there is no way a machine will be able to perform these in the same way a human can.

I think there is one topic regarding the use of technology of which I am a little sceptical and that is the predictive ability of software. By the time we receive a new lawsuit, there might be a high chance that the software will say that we are losing the case based on the current position of the court or the current position of the work in your country. The big challenge yet to be overcome is, again, the nuances of a number of court decisions we have and the way a machine interprets and provides its provision. There are a number of cases still decided and won by means of small details and it might be challenging for a machine to process such information in the same way that humans are able to. So, this is one area regarding the use of technology that I view as there still being more proof required.

So overall, I am fully supportive, and I feel the majority of the technology available has been fully proven. I am a big believer that they have come to help and streamline and eliminate the overhead.

CIP is a research organisation conducting agricultural research for development in 22 countries, mainly in the global South – this means we are very much involved with the development of intellectual property. Sustainability in agriculture is a key priority for our organisation. We have reached six million households in sub-Saharan Africa with our sweet potato technologies: we distribute genetic resources so other entities can use them in developing new solutions.

We are very much a capitaliser of technological innovation in terms of agriculture. That is exactly how I see our legal department. We are a service-oriented group of lawyers using technology to support colleagues around the world to be aware of the regulatory elements that they need to be taking into consideration for the implementation of their projects. This is so they can plan, and so that nothing becomes a bottleneck. We organise our portfolio management through a system called OCS – it’s based on ‘Agresso’. This is where we try to automate as much as possible: in terms of creating reports, creating networks for contractual management, and timesheets. An important aspect of our work is supporting the innovation pipeline. We have contracted an external software service provider for management of our IP platform, which covers all IP management processes, from invention disclosure all the way up to licensing. As soon as our colleagues have a brilliant idea, we encourage them to disclose it internally. This triggers a review process, supported by both our legal and finance teams. Then, with approval from assigned leadership, we take all necessary protections, such as intellectual property rights. With our integrated corporate system, we can monitor how we use that technology with different development projects or whether we license it for others to use. We can measure the impact whilst we’re deploying the invention for public benefit. Email almost becomes a burden when you come to the end, with a long exchange of documents from lots of different members of the chain. We work in a decentralised way, so collaborating with Microsoft Teams has been tremendously helpful – it’s fantastic when you’re working across multiple time zones with different people.

We are now a lot closer to our clients thanks to technology. Not only from a telecommunications and technology point of view, but also because we’re able to follow their work and provide support almost instantly.

Now that we have significant information technology support, we can understand what the client’s business actually is.

Let me give you an example: we have a monitoring and evaluation platform where we gather all the information – this is not necessarily legal information. But, we do have the key performance indicators in there. We can look at it and identify the key challenges colleagues are facing. We can see if there is anything related to legal challenges. Therefore, we can pre-empt project implementation challenges before they become real bottlenecks for projects. The ability to work on legal documents in real time is a really big change.

The main challenges we’re experiencing within the legal team concern confidentiality and data security. Now this comes with multiple aspects: it’s not necessarily something the legal department can resolve. We also work in connectivity: we have everything on the cloud, so colleagues are able to operate them when they’re in the field. But, we do have countries and projects where internet connectivity is an issue. In those cases, having world-class technological tools available to us can actually be time-consuming and frustrating. We’ve been looking at how much can we do by teleconferencing rather than travelling, allowing us to have as much face-to-face interaction as possible – without having to travel across the world and contribute to global warming. On one hand, technology is developing significantly, but on the other, there are still parts of the continent that are lagging behind.

For in-house teams, the most important benefit of technology is being able to communicate in real time: shortening the communication time between offices, therefore being able to explain very quickly and provide support from a legal perspective. The legal profession is very much based on the knowledge of the lawyers and the ability to understand the situation at hand: I believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) is particularly useful for in-house teams. The more we can rely on AI, the more we can open up bottlenecks. So, for a small legal department working in multiple jurisdictions, the big challenges are knowledge of local laws and regulations and the language barrier. With local laws and regulations, you can do your research or contract outside counsel. But, with the language barrier, it is more difficult. For example, if you want to work with China, you need both a translator and a lawyer who speaks Chinese. Working with 22 different countries, this has become a bigger challenge. Therefore, AI, in terms of translating written communications, is extremely useful to us today.

With AI, it will be particularly beneficial in streamlining processes for legal teams in the future. I see AI as a continuation and an extension of computing power. We no longer have typewriting, we’re collaborating online via real-time documents – this allows us to work more efficiently. We also see this through Siri and Cortana – they act as a personal assistant, they send an email which causes someone to respond to your queries. If we go from this to ‘hey I am setting up your goals because you have these objectives,’ that would increase the productivity of our legal team. There’s an administrative side. I think we, as lawyers, need to manage AI and it is very dependent on the capabilities of the lawyer. The judgement and understanding of the business that a lawyer has is very difficult to replace with AI, it might be difficult for AI to provide adaptable solutions. I think, for the next ten years, we still need a lawyer to support AI – rather than AI taking over the role of lawyer.

With new technology, new ethical issues are also raised: information is sensitive because it can be personal information, research data and research projects. We want to make sure that our assistance provides efficient protection, but we are constantly challenged by people who want to access our information without proper authorisation. The more digital we become in our work, the more difficult it is to establish network safety and security. So, at the same time, we need to educate the people who are using and accessing our network in order to protect it. This will require training and capacity building for our workforce.

I moved to Latin America six years ago. Previously, I was working in London, Istanbul, Nairobi and Benin. I think the legal profession in Peru is behind the US and Western Europe in terms of adopting new technology. Here, I can still only see technology use at the word processing and some systems levels. But lawyers will need to adapt quickly, as digital transformation is picking up speed, especially in the government.

GC: Can you tell me about how you use technology in the Bayer legal team in Costa Rica?

Alejandra Castro (AC): The legal headquarters in Germany have organised a worldwide structure in the legal department. We might be a unique global legal department where all our strategies are aligned including the vision on technology that should lead our functions. We centralise in a single IT tool the contracts, compliance cases, and data privacy processes, in addition to the monitoring of regulations in the region, plus patents as well.

As legal departments in Bayer, we handle various databases, and we are currently migrating to a new IT tool handled by regional expert teams, to make sure that everyone uses the same templates for contracts, with the same quality of service and the same regulations. The tool allows being a self-service contract database for contracts that we have already drafted, which will be harmonised for all the legal entities that we have. There will be an ability to make an online request for different templates outside those already drafted, and then these requests for new contracts will done by the legal department. Our expectation – and we are already reviewing this and finding this is what is happening now – is that the workload is getting lowered. We are trying to use these tools in order to make the process more agile, and to speed up all of the negotiations that we have with external vendors and so on.

Catalina Morales (CM): This new tool grants a contract life cycle management system. This means that you can find a template, you can send it to your business partner in legal, you can send it to your provider from the platform, the provider can give any feedback in the platform as well and, if they have the digital signature, they can also sign it online, and then you just store it in the same system. The idea is to use this system for contracts from the beginning.

AC: On the IP side, we have a different tool – it’s the same IT platform, but it’s a different tool where we upload all the patents that we have. It helps us by reminding us, for example, about deadlines and other IP risks that are very important with patents. If you miss a deadline, you can lose your patent, so for us it’s very important to keep a record of the timeline. In the past, patents were handled through local law firms and they were the ones that kept the reminders on the deadlines and the stages of the patent process. Now that we have developed our own patent tools, we do all the surveillance and the follow-up of what the law firms are doing, so it has increased our work in a positive way.

CM: On the compliance side, the tool registers every event or every investigation that we have. All compliance officers in each country or region have to input everything – every advance that has been happening in the case or the investigation. It is a tool where we are recording, but also reporting to global headquarters. It helps to visualise the impact compliance is having and guide future decision-making, such as whether we need to reinforce training or do more work on specific topics in a specific area or country. It is also useful to use as a knowledge system – you can visualise and it even helps you show that, for example, the number of investigations has gone down since you’ve trained, since you’ve provided more information. You can see, actually in a tangible way, the results of your compliance work.

GC: Have there been any particular challenges that you’ve encountered as you’ve been developing these IT platforms?

AC: Yes, there have. The first challenge was to make sure that we have a single template and that we keep the template with the most protection for the company, no matter in which jurisdiction the contract would be enforced. In my region, there are 33 countries in which we have legal operations, all of whom have different regulations, so that was challenging.

The second challenge was that, in the past, each region had developed their own IT tool for contracts. Now that we are migrating to the new tool – which is the single tool that will be used by everyone – it creates an additional challenge for areas or regions that need to leave the tools that were already developed, and migrate to this too.

CM: There’s always going to be challenges with what is a culture change. You need to explain that you’re not going to do this anymore, the way you’ve been doing it for the last 10 years – now you have to do it this way. Obviously, that is going to take time to adjust. There’s always going to be that initial scepticism about the new system – is it really going to work, do we have to do all this change if it won’t work in two or three years? We do have to do a lot of convincing, a lot of explaining why actually the system works and how it is going to benefit you. That’s the key: I think once they see the benefits, they get on board.

GC: Legal is one area where Bayer is implementing artificial intelligence. How are you currently using it and how do you think that use that will evolve from the sorts of things people are currently using it for?

AC: We currently have experience using AI in labour calculations, for example, for severance payments. It has already brought a lot of value to the department and it is just the beginning. I believe that, in contracts for example, we are going to see a lot more development around how artificial intelligence can help us work on our daily tasks.

CM: I think that AI could have an impact on the profession and the positions required in a legal department. A physical lawyer will always be needed, but the amount of lawyers needed in one department may decrease. For the company, or for the law firm, you could say that’s better because you need fewer people to do the same amount of work, but on the human side, as a lawyer, I wouldn’t like to lose my job and be replaced by technology! We need to find a common ground for us to work together.

I believe we will continue to see a rise in automation, too. It’s inevitable. I don’t know if it will change drastically and I don’t how fast it will change, but it will definitely change. The important thing is to have a company that supports this innovation and digitalisation, because it’s going to affect not only legal but every single department in the company. The engagement of the employees is going to be 100% necessary.

GC: How do you think the legal sector compares to other professional service sectors in Latin America when it comes to technology, innovation and working digitally?

AC: I think that lawyers believe they are not comparable. This is why we have sometimes not implemented technology. But I do think that our services are totally comparable to other areas that have already implemented these tools, like in accounting and finance teams. We are able and we can implement those tools – and there is no need to be afraid of that. I remember when we implemented digital signatures for several legal procedures, there was a lot of resistance from lawyers in the region, but now we use it on a regular basis and digital signatures are part of what we implement in contracts and data procedures. I think there are a lot of things that we can do and I think that legal departments are more than prepared to undertake this.

GC: How would you like to see law firms using and adapting to technology?

AC: If I request external counsel advice for legal opinions, I would love to have law firms keep a record of what they have answered to us for corporate housekeeping, to make sure that they have IT tools to give reminders on processes that are done on a yearly basis, like renewal of the corporation or payment of taxes. But it’s hard to find that in the market. At least, in my country group, we don’t have it. I know that I have peers in other country groups where they do have that service, but not in Central America.

We are undertaking evaluations on outside law firms focused on the technology that they are implementing, so that we can look to use that as well. But, at least in the region where we have our legal department, I don’t think that there is too much going on yet. The law firms that I work with use very little technology in order to provide their services. However, from a global perspective, I know that headquarters have analysed global law firms that are using technology, so we have been able to review those technologies to see if we can apply them in our region or to our IT platforms.

GC: How can in-house teams best prepare and equip themselves for technological changes and disruption in future?

AC: There is a lot of work that has to be done from an investment and budget perspective. I think that is the first challenge that we need to face. The second is training; we’re used to having legal training, but now I think it’s very important to have specific training on the new IT tools that we are implementing, in order to be part of this new era where technology will be leading the legal department.

CM: As a legal department or a law firm that is not yet very technologically advanced, I would definitely recommend doing due diligence. Start small – start mapping out what systems can make your life easier. Maybe just a repository for a list of contracts, so you can upload a template, so that the whole law firm has a basic template that can be shared within a general system – that way, anyone that needs that type of contract can use it and the organisation has one face towards the client. Because, as a client, maybe one lawyer did the same type of contract differently than another lawyer, then you’re giving me two different versions, and maybe in one we went to labour litigation and with the other one we didn’t. So, at the end, it’s easier because they would have the same standard within.

I’m talking just basic contracts, but it works with other things, like legal opinions. If you’re going to give your client a legal opinion, you need to keep a record of what you said to the company and you can also start showing the benefits of having that to the managerial department, to see the importance of having that IT technology within the company.

I joined ADM a year and a half ago, and in the past year we’ve invested a lot in technology. I myself am a person that really thinks that technology is important, because you really can replace operational work that I think is not a priority for senior lawyers – I try to prioritise the strategic issues and benchmarking, in order to check the other companies and really understand what we have in the market. I try to improve and, if this is the case, we invest externally.

ADM Brazil invests a lot in technology, we’re upfront: we know what works and what doesn’t. When we see something working, we can adopt that solution to what we also do in the future. But, in order to do this, we need to gather the necessary data to take such decisions. And, looking at information necessary to take those decisions, law firms are able to provide information in a better way and in a better form – things like graphics – and some law firms are able to provide us this information, so that we don’t need to do the work, which I consider to be operational, to get this information ourselves. And, it’s on information like that we can take decisions. That’s the point.

It’s never easy to get budget. It’s super difficult: you have to put a business case forward and prove why you need to bring that technology to the company, and make some sort of trade-off – this need not be in monetary terms, it could be efficiency. You need to show how valuable the technology is that you’re investing in. If you’re a big, global company you also need to prove that this technology is in accordance with the entire IT project globally. Not just in terms of local security – because what you are doing on a local level can interfere in security – but, you need to understand that everybody has to approve. Being practical in this way can bring a lot in for the company.

At ADM, we have control technology which allows us to control the litigation cases. The technology we use was acquired in the market but specifically customised to our needs. We have a massive litigation area here, so that technology helps us get the information we need. I wouldn’t call it artificial intelligence because it’s not done alone, but it does allow us to use that information gathered for practice or for analysis. With this, we can see how many cases we’re winning, how many we’ve lost, how much money we’re going to lose and how many cases we’ve received. For example, if we focus on labour pay and want to see why we have so many of these labour cases, you can detect that through our technology, and then this allows legal to brief and train the business to be aware of the current legislation and to be able to reduce these problems in the future. We can do this in relation to any problem. If we see that our consumers have a specific problem in a particular region, then we can make sure we avoid the same problem in the future. It’s a useful strategy to have in legal.

Brazil is very advanced in terms of technology and has very sophisticated solutions concerning IT because of all the investment here. Being a super big and democratic nation, we have a lot of legal work and technology here. But, Latin America consists of many nations. For example, you’ve got both Mexico and Bolivia – these are two totally different countries with different levels of development. When you think of Mexico, there are many differences in culture, and you must also consider the dependency on the US. You also have Brazil, which speaks Portuguese, whilst all other Latin American nations speak Spanish. You have many differences, but Brazil is a pioneer in this area compared to other Latin American countries.

I think that AI is revolutionary for in-house teams. I think that AI, or something related to AI, will create more connections than ever. I think the future is about AI and connection, because as much as we can be connected now, we cannot connect things and people – AI helps with this. When you can make out as many links as you can between people and information – for example, you can now make a complete profile on and of anyone. Before I meet someone, I can go into a web link, see their profile and other information about them – everything – even their personal life: whether they’re married, have kids, where they live and what they like and dislike. This is powerful because I can have a conversation with them and convince them of something, because, essentially, I know them now. Giving a simple example, if you have LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram, I now know you. So I will know how to process our conversation in a way that I can convince you of something. We can see this when purchasing items on Amazon: when you buy a product, Amazon offers you other related products. This is embryonic and I think the future will be more like that. The more connected we are with information, the more connected we are with people.

AI and technology will not replace lawyers, but it will replace lawyers who don’t use technology. By nature, I think technology and information will become more global. So, I think privacy will become a big problem because everyone will know everything about you, and you won’t be able to have a little bit of privacy. Most of the available information is free right now, because it’s so easy to get this information. What was valuable in the past is not valuable in the future – like information. In the future, you need to be more strategic and use that to your advantage. I think the future is about AI and connecting us to as much information as possible.

For a non-millennial, old-fashioned lawyer, as I am, technology is challenging and represents a large area to explore. At IBM, we are expected to be acquainted and familiar with technology. From an operational perspective, there is a need for lawyers to be tech savvy and understand the technology.

And, it is our responsibility, as professionals, to improve the use of technology and encourage the use of it.

The way lawyers use technology has evolved in the past years and, in my view, we have made progress, but there is still a journey ahead of us. When I joined IBM – eight years ago – you could provide a quality service to your internal clients by knowing the business and products. Now everything moves at a faster pace: regulations have changed, so the only way to catch up with new regulations is by using technology – especially when you work in the fintech environment. As in every industry, there is always room for improvement, and the only way to do it is creating a culture of continuous learning, including hard and soft skills on your learning journey.

Emergent technologies are real, and we have to live with them. Technology is not here to replace a lawyer’s work, but rather to enhance it. There is a human factor that lawyers provide – interpretations, judgement, decisions, solutions and knowledge of legal systems and a particular business situation – that needs to be part of the entire law system – that is why technology and human knowledge are complementary. On the other hand, if a lawyer keeps up with the different technological changes and embraces new technologies, the exercise of the legal profession will be improved. In fact, I believe you will become a better professional.

As with many other countries in the region and globally, Colombia is starting its journey in the use of technology in different professions. Incorporating, for example, AI within in-house legal departments is helping law firms focus in what is really important – their clients – while technology ensures documents are processed in a faster and accurate way, what translates in better services for the clients and time saving for the lawyers.

Where technology is headed is a tricky question – I certainly don’t have an answer to that. New technologies emerge all the time and they develop quickly, so it is very unpredictable. It is hard to predict what’s going to happen, and, what is actually going to come up next and what you think is going to come up next, are not the same thing.

Nubank is a Brazilian fintech founded with the objective of fighting complexity in the financial market by offering intuitive products and services. It has grown a lot since I joined, more than four years ago, to start and build the legal team.

Today, Nubank has more than 20 million clients (it is considered the largest digital bank outside Asia) and has recently expanded beyond Brazil to explore other Latam countries. And we are still at the beginning of our journey. One of the secrets to such hyper growth is the focus on the customer. We structure ourselves in four pillars: user experience, design, technology and data science. Technology has allowed us to get where we are today, but the human factor makes the company stand out.

The legal team, like other teams in the company, uses technology to manage information and data to assist in decision making. We have created internal tools to manage certain matters we deal with and which enable us to interact with other teams more efficiently. A current focus for us is smart contract management through a combination of technology and AI.

As a company, even as we increasingly use AI in our daily work, it is worth emphasising that we don’t delegate responsibility for decisions to machines. AI enables richer insights from data and improves the quality and speed of decision making. However, at the end of the day, humans remain accountable for making decisions. We are always called upon to use our judgement in the way we use the information we obtain from AI.

That is why in-house lawyers must be what I would call architects or designers of solutions. In many negotiations and decision-making processes, the human component is essential. Understanding body language and anticipating movements based on a repertoire inaccessible to machines is not an exact science. Science can help and will, more and more, but I believe there will always be a human in the loop, at least for the foreseeable future.

Technology will indeed replace repetitive and administrative tasks. It already allows better management of documents, streamlined due diligence processes and court decisions monitoring. However, lawyers – assisted by an increasingly powerful array of technology and AI tools – will continue as key players in designing solutions.

The legal market as a whole needs to be more prepared for a technological future. Law professionals must learn to harness the power of data and AI as a natural evolution of the profession. It is auspicious the emerging trend of law schools teaching courses on data and technology, and law firms introducing tech to their daily work.

Inside a tech company it’s very enriching to have people from different areas sharing their ideas and seeing how synergies are created between lawyers, engineers, business analysts, designers or data analysts. These interactions contribute a lot to deeply understanding how technology can be a further ally in developing better products, services and solutions, including in the legal area.

All in all, technology is definitely something that is already helping in-house teams and the legal market. And it will help even further, there is no way to avoid it. The key point is understanding how technology can add value while being aware of the importance of legal ethics, data protection and accountability in such discussions.