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Andrea Gualde

My journey into an in-house legal role has not been a traditional one. I reached my current leadership position as Director of legal and institutional affairs without having any previous corporate experience. In fact, I had next to no previous experience in the private sector at all!

My career developed almost entirely in the public sector, where I focused on administrative and regulatory law. In 1991, almost exclusively I started working for the Executive National Legal Counsel and Solicitor General’s Office. This was the beginning of a career that lasted more than two decades. My roles over that time encompassed many different responsibilities, but mainly I was leading legal teams at the Ministry of Justice and the Secretariat of Human Rights, where I was the national director of legal affairs. During those years, I worked heavily in the international arena, involving topics as wide-ranging as investment protection treaties and human rights. Despite the diverse nature of those topics, they shared many common aspects: the development of complex strategies; the coordination of interdisciplinary teams for international arbitrations and trials; and human rights legal proceedings and negotiations. I learned from excellent mentors the skills I needed in cases before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and Mercosur.

From a very early stage, I understood that these tasks demanded combining the law’s more technical aspects with wider political analysis and a knowledge of international relations. Thankfully, politics was not absent from my education nor from my calling.

I became a student at the School of Law of Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1985. I was part of the generation that lived during the transition to democracy, which started in 1983 with the election of President Alfonsin and ended seven long years of military dictatorship. This historic circumstance left a deep mark on law students who moved between classes and deliberation forums, thinking about the effects caused to a society whose rule of law had been substituted with terror practices. This was, definitely, the origin of my professional calling on the area of human rights, where I worked for more than 15 years as a public official, and which I continue to support even after leaving government. In fact, I currently head the regional advisory board for Latin America of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation in parallel with my corporate in-house role.

Another very strong influence for me – and one which shaped the way I perceived the law at a very early stage of my career – was the opportunity to continue my academic studies at Yale University as a visiting scholar. Throughout those years, I was exposed to discussions that weren’t yet taking place in Argentina: exciting discussions about feminism, diversity, and multiculturalism. These discussions had a lasting impact on me.

After working as a government official for more than 20 years, another great challenge was put before me: I received the invitation to join an Argentinian private healthcare company to help it strengthen its in-house legal department and to help it tackle important regulatory challenges related to the business’s growth and expansion. (Healthcare is a highly-regulated industry in Argentina.) And so, in 2013, I joined Farmacity to lead its legal department. Not long after I joined, my responsibilities expanded to include leading the area of institutional relations, communication, and sustainability.

“My point of view is that the gender agenda cannot be separated from the history of my generation, nor from my professional training.”

The transition from the public to the private sector was a steep learning curve for me, and involved having to adopt different cultures, languages, practices, and traditions. However, despite working in such a different environment, I realised that the training, principles, and my perspective on justice and the application for the rule of law remained the same and enabled me to adapt quickly to my new situation. I became aware that every position, every role, has been and will always be a continuous learning experience, in which the skills developed and assimilated at one time and for a specific context are adapted and used at other times and in other contexts.

In my corporate life, I find myself applying many of the skills I learned in my years as a government official: the ability to manage and resolve conflict, to lead big teams, to work under pressure, and to make decisions and face the consequences. My experience working within interdisciplinary areas also allowed me to learn vital communication skills: explaining complex legal concepts to non-lawyers, and managing interfaces between political decisions and technical structures. Those same communication skills are used daily in my job as in-house counsel. They are present in the relationships I have with external counsellors for the development of strategies, and during the decision-making process with our shareholders.

As a corporate in-house lawyer, it is important to understand who is responsible for the legal strategy or institutional decision, the scope of the external advisory services, and the way in which the in-house professional provides a unique view of the business’s needs. Also, it is vital to remember the point of view of your shareholders.

The combination of experiences I talk about are not reduced simply to the technical legal skills or qualifications I have gained. It is so much more than that. In this regard, I would like to focus on the human rights agenda – mainly in connection to the gender agenda – and the connection between cultural and societal values and beliefs, and how organisations behave.

My point of view is that the gender agenda cannot be separated from the history of my generation, nor from my professional training. Legal education and professional legal practice for women in Argentina historically reflect the same structural discrimination experienced by other professions and activities, and that women face daily in their lives outside of work as well.

Most students in schools of law in Argentina are women. However, that proportion is transformed in the labour market, where the pyramid is totally inverted. Let us specifically have a look at the proportion of women who are partners at big law firms, or the negligible proportion of women in managerial positions. Let us look at the public sector where most workers within the judicial system are women but only a small number of those women are judges – and those women judges hold office mostly at courts of first instance, seldom at courts of appeals, and where only one woman is among the justices of the Supreme Court. It is worth mentioning that only in 2004 did a woman become part of the highest court in Argentina, and only in 2009 did the School of Law from Universidad de Buenos Aires appoint a woman as dean – for the first time since it was founded in 1821.

Of course, this reality is not unique to the legal industry, not to Argentina. Across the corporate world, most of the top positions in companies are held by men. However, in the legal industry, this vertical segregation is also coupled with horizontal segregation. There are legal areas traditionally performed by women and others by men. The ‘women’s world’ of legal practice has been historically limited to family, labour, and employment law or to those areas considered protective, and related to care. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the world of power, dominated by men: public law, business, and diplomacy. These areas are rarely entrusted to women.

This double layer of gender segregation relies heavily on unconscious biases that support the training, recruitment, and professional development of men at the expense of women. The professional development of a woman lawyer when she graduates is different from that of men. The opportunities to study a major, to study abroad, to publish articles, to become a member of professional boards, and to attend networking activities have historically been more limited for women than for men. This is because the time for professional development often coincides with the time at which women are of reproductive age. If development opportunities occur without any accompanying active policies that allow women to balance their professional lives with their decision to become mothers – and also level caring activities between men and women – this gap will only become wider.

Inequalities and gaps are not fixed on their own. In top in-house positions, as with any other leadership role in any other organisation, corrective measures must be implemented to fix the original inequality. Organisatations should regularly review their selection and promotion processes, they should incorporate gender perspectives into their assessment processes, and they should develop policies to make work and family life compatible.

“All women who have been able to develop a successful professional career have a responsibility to our gender to offer support and guidance.”

For women lawyers in in-house leadership positions, there can be an additional barrier in their way – that legal departments in companies are often support areas, and therefore outside the ‘core’ business areas, which are still very much dominated by men, and seen as men’s responsibility. This segregation is, once again, not only vertical but sometimes horizontal.

Happily, though, a new paradigm is emerging in organisations. The global women’s movement, to which Argentina constitutes no exception, is changing the way in which the gender agenda must be considered by the private sector – almost mandatorily.

Diversity, inclusion, and, in general, human rights, are not only a matter for state or international bodies, but are also starting to become part of companies’ agendas. In 2011, the United Nations issued a document of Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. As a consequence of that universal declaration, the topic is, little by little, moving from the periphery of the private sector’s agenda and advancing towards the center of the business. Companies that embrace diversity and inclusion are committed to broaden the scope of their human rights work; they are moving from traditionally isolated actions that were undertaken under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility, to developing a whole agenda on gender, labour conditions, diversity, and environmental protection for the entire organisation.

This is what we propose to achieve at Farmacity. For more than five years, we have been putting actions in place related to the promotion of equality and the fight against gender-based violence; to educate, prevent, sanction against, and eliminate discrimination and violence against women in any of its forms; and to create alliances with government bodies and organisations from the private sector and civil society to boost the actions carried out together within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In line with our belief that words matter, we made a public declaration that Farmacity is a company with a focus on gender equality.

That said, actions speak louder than words, and so our first concrete action was developing an internal protocol for gender-based violence interventions. We established a procedure that must be followed when violence cases are detected; this includes the provision of special leave for women who are the victims of violence, and arranging assistance with the help of the legal and human resources teams, in a strictly confidential process. In collaboration with specialised institutions, we train all our personnel on gender-based violence: how to detect it and how to provide assistance to the person affected. We also contribute with public campaigns about this serious social problem, which in Argentina causes the death of one woman every 32 hours.

This was then followed by several other initiatives. In collaboration with the National Ministry of Justice, we developed a programme that trains convicted women or women recently released from prison in cosmetics and personal care. This empowers women and also provides job opportunities to an often invisible group of women that faces many different types of discrimination.

We also implemented self-assessment initiatives with the United Nations programme, which enables us to develop a sustainable equality agenda, tackling issues such as women in leadership positions and the reduction of the gender pay gap, amongst many others. These initiatives, along with others that we intend to put in place in the future, result from having an organisational culture that values and promotes an inclusive leadership, and that encourages individuals to be committed to gender equality and women’s rights.

I believe that all women who have been able to develop a successful professional career have a responsibility to our gender to offer support and guidance. The organisational culture that I am committed to promotes and encourages women in such way that they should not have to make any extra effort to demonstrate their value.

From the positions we have, we must contribute to make the road easier for future generations and I believe mentoring constitutes an essential activity within all organisations. For those who are already in senior positions, it is so important to share your experience with those starting their career, to enable an easier road, to reduce gaps, and to eliminate inequalities.

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Zelma Acosta-Rubio

I would like to say that my move from private practice to an in-house role was a carefully thought out decision; but, as with most things in life, it was simply an opportunity that presented itself at the right time and where all the conditions were there for me to step in and thrive. The decision was not so much to go in-house – it was more about the challenge to build a modern, innovative legal team profile in a Peruvian bank that was already at the forefront of redefining banking services in Peru.

When it was privatised in 1994, Interbank’s revised value proposition focused on convenience, speed, and service. It was the first bank to establish financial stores operating seven days a week (9am–9pm) at supermarkets. It built a large distribution network, owned the largest out-of-branch ATM network, and redesigned its financial stores with a human-centric approach. By 2010, data mining and scoring had evolved, and the bank moved from product offerings to customised financial services solutions based on deep knowledge of clients’ needs. The challenge for the legal team was to modernise the way legal services were delivered. Speed was key.

When I joined Interbank in 2007, we renewed about 40% of the legal team and set ourselves a vision: ‘to unlock value for corporate strategy’. In terms of speed, that meant working closely with cross-functional teams from the outset in order to design timely solutions with strategic value. Thus, all our lawyers were required to develop business, strategic, and financial acumen to ensure the legal function’s strategic alignment with the rest of the organisation; and to understand Interbank’s strategic intent and be able to articulate our internal clients’ business plans and KPIs. We launched (and continue to run) meet-ups and workshops to instil these new skills and develop a strategic mindset across the entire team. For me it is imperative that, as an in-house team, you have a deep understanding of your company’s strategic intent, and make strategic decisions when dealing with legal risks. You are not just acting in an advisory capacity; you need to own your recommendations and decisions and understand the value proposition as if you were responsible for the P&L.

When I started my first job in New York, I was hired as a foreign associate and had a front row seat learning about power dynamics in private practice. I worked in the financial services practice – an area that was 100% dominated by men, and where women struggled with late nights and family commitments. By the time I got to London a year later, I had made the decision to focus on work, and maybe – just maybe – have a family later. While London was a bit more cosmopolitan, and a bit more inclusive, the hours were still very long and it was still highly competitive. I made a conscious choice to get ahead by playing on my strengths: my knowledge of civil and common law, my pitching skills, and Latin America’s privatisation wave. I was 28 years old and originating deals in Latam, which was unusual for a young associate.

When I moved in-house to Interbank, it was a very different experience, not only because it was a move to an in-house role, but because it was in Peru. However, there was one factor that remained the same, and that was the nicely packed set of stereotypes and unconscious bias in the workplace that help to perpetuate and hold together the dynamics of power. What I observed was a strong underlying assumption of ‘women take care’ vs ‘men take charge’ as a shared belief by men and women alike. This was not only in Interbank, but across the corporate sector in general. And it applies equally to private practice. This, I believe, is the biggest barrier to true gender equality.

“As our research progressed, we realised that it was strategically important for us to accelerate diversity and inclusion.”

In private practice, I think the focus on hourly billing is particularly troublesome; the lack of flexible working arrangements and the penalties women endure for taking maternity leave set them back on their path to attaining partnership. Working in-house is not necessarily better. Stereotypes and unconscious bias are still present; however, what we do see is more and more corporates taking decisive action towards diversity and inclusion, which of course benefits the entire organisation. At Interbank, for example, we share with our panel law firms our diversity and inclusion initiatives, and will be asking them for their data, policies, and accountability for diversity and inclusion in the teams we work with. We also push our firms to give us more women as contacts, especially because firm relationship management has typically been a space reserved for male senior partners.

Alongside my role as GC, I also hold the position of board secretary. I realised I wanted to learn more about diversity in the boardroom. And so I asked for Interbank’s data. In 2012, overall female representation at Interbank was 58%, with 44% C-suite female executives. On the surface this looked to be a good balance. But when we delved more deeply into the data, we learned that female representation reduced to 38% (supervisor), 34% (deputy manager), and 11% (manager). This showed us that we had a significant pipeline issue. It was at this point that I ‘dug my heels in’ and decided to figure out the why, the how, and the what of diversity and inclusion for Grupo Intercorp. We started by asking the following question to large groups of women in several of our Group companies: what are the main reasons that prevent women’s development and keeps them from attaining higher positions? Is it a matter of skill sets, lifestyle, or confidence?

We then asked the following, more in-depth questions:

Skill sets

  • Do women have different skill sets than men?
  • If so, are these differences a key element that will advance a man’s career to the detriment of a woman’s?

Lifestyle

  • For you, what is a normal day?
  • Does being married or single make a difference? Why?
  • Is being a mum an obstacle to career advancement? Why?

Confidence

  • Are men more confident?
  • Is lack of confidence a barrier for women’s career advancement?

As our research progressed, we realised that it was strategically important for us to accelerate diversity and inclusion, and to build on the collective learnings across Grupo Intercorp. In December 2018, the role of chief diversity and inclusion officer was created, as was a Diversity Board, and we have made significant progress since then.

All Group company boards now have approved D&I policies and guidelines and accompanying action plans. We determined to set internal targets by the end of 2019. The policies recognise diversity as a value and inclusion as a leadership trait. The guidelines for 2019 were, first, to prioritise three tracks: (i) attraction, selection, retention, and advancement of women in the organisation, (ii) work-life balance, and (iii) zero tolerance of sexual harassment; and, second, to educate on and build awareness of stereotypes and unconscious bias. All our Group companies prioritise the same three tracks, though some may decide to take on additional ones depending on their own demographics. We also continue to participate in Ranking Par, Latin America’s first-ever gender equality ranking.

We hire for competence and hold interviews with structured and diverse panels. I am also a full supporter of female-led law firms. In the past two years, I have retained (+3) and recommended female lawyers who have set up their own individual legal boutiques. These are women who left the larger firms because they wanted to own their time and deliver results.

Internally, I make sure women get stretch assignments and I expose them to senior leaders across the organisation. I lead by example by engaging in the conversation, making a point of bringing people’s views forward, and being explicit about being equal in our differences.

My commitment to promoting gender equality in the legal industry extends beyond my roles at Grupo Intercorp and Interbank. In 2016, together with ten other lawyers, I formed Women in the Legal Profession (WIP) Peru, an initiative borne from the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice for the empowerment of women in the legal profession. At WIP-Peru, we focus on five tracks:

“The advice I would give to any woman wanting to get ahead in the legal industry is this: play to your strengths. Understand complexity. Always negotiate your salary. ”
  • Design and divulge guidelines for the selection, promotion, and retention of female lawyers;
  • Develop leadership skills for female lawyers (workshops);
  • Actively commit to have female lawyer representation at public events;
  • Run mentoring programmes;
  • Measure best practices and progress.

As part of WIP-Peru, and as GC of Interbank, I promote direct conversations with law firms around diversity and inclusion matters. I encourage them to adopt guidelines for the selection, promotion, and retention of female lawyers and design D&I action plans. Of course, the question of quotas versus targets often comes up. For me, it’s about looking at the demographics, setting realistic targets for diversity, and managing expectations. Personally, I believe 40% is a nice target to start with. In some cases, though – and depending on the toxicity of the culture or the need for change – a hard quota should be placed to accelerate the inclusion of women. I want to stress, though, that in all cases you must make sure you have the best talent ‘auditioning’ for the part, whether or not there are quotas or targets in place.

Finally, the advice I would give to any woman wanting to get ahead in the legal industry is this: Play to your strengths. Understand complexity. Always negotiate your salary.

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Alberto Vergara, Head of Litigation, Scotiabank Chile

I would say that our legal team is more advanced than other legal teams because the whole bank is making efforts in the area of technology. There are other financial institutions and other companies in other areas that are behind us – sometimes in a very dramatic way – because they don’t, in their businesses, feel that there is an urgency in making the whole business digital. So, obviously, we have an advantage in that area. We also have an advantage because we are an international company. But, on the other hand, sometimes small companies and new companies have an advantage because they start with digital. For us, we are advanced, but sometimes you have to change the habits of people who have several years in the industry – that they have to now learn how to become digital. That’s a difficult issue. Again, we are better in comparison with a lot of other legal teams, but I would say that smaller companies and start-up companies – their legal teams are probably more advanced than us.

Mainly, we use external providers that develop commercial products for the legal industry in Chile. We have different systems: one in the dispute resolution area called Case Tracking, to review the status of your case in the courts. It’s software that is based on cloud computing technology. That provides you with several functionalities that allow you to track and manage your cases and prepare reports, and so on and so forth. It’s a very friendly software, and it’s available for any company or any lawyer and in other Latin American countries, and it’s been very useful for us.

I would say that the challenge is to increase the use of technology. It’s a growing area and there is a big focus on making the whole bank in the legal area digital. So that’s the goal, and that’s the big challenge but, on the other hand, the problem is that you have to invest a lot of time, a lot of money, and especially education in your internal and external stakeholders. So, it’s very challenging, because the world is urging banks, especially in legal areas, to make a big bet on technology and digital tools but, on the other hand, you don’t have the proper resource to do so. Also, the ‘business as usual’ on a daily basis sometimes makes it harder to make that change. I would say we are trying to increase the time and the money that we are spending on digitalisation, but it is difficult to make a schedule or to develop a very precise and clear plan to do so.

IT is often more focused on the commercial side, so it’s difficult in any business to get attention to the legal area. I would say everyone is very keen on improving their digital relationship with the clients, and let’s say the back office of any business is out of their priorities. So, I would say that IT areas are 90% focused on the digitalisation of the relationship with the clients.

I would say there are three main issues where technology is dramatically changing the legal profession.

In first place, the technology is allowing legal areas to do business with less support staff. Right now, you need so many paralegals or so many assistants, so lawyers are increasingly doing, with the support of technology, tasks that in the past would require non-lawyer assistants. That’s the first dramatic change, because it’s making the legal teams – in some cases – all lawyers, and they don’t need too much support from other areas. That probably will increase in the future, and especially general lawyers will very much do everything by themselves. That’s important.

In second place, I would say that the technology is making it so that the legal profession is losing the human touch in a way that, right now, you can negotiate and close a big deal without meeting the other party in person. That’s a dramatic change, because it allows you to work remotely, even in complex fields. The challenge is that by losing the personal touch, it will hurt the lawyers in their capacity to develop negotiation tactics and so forth. You save cost in matters like travel and meetings, but on the other hand, you will lose some useful tools that only the experience of personal relationships provides to lawyers.

In third place, I would say the big question is: how will AI shape the legal profession? Right now many people are talking about AI, but nobody knows for sure how it will work in the legal profession. That’s an open question, and it may imply that some legal teams will invest a lot of money in AI but at the end it will prove useless. On the other hand, some legal teams will find that AI is useful in some areas: for example, smart contracts. In service industries, in which you have a massive contract that you have to sign every day with clients, artificial intelligence in smart contracts could be a useful tool, but again, probably an open question. There could be an important change regarding managing caseloads and case precedents in order to improve your litigation skills but, so far, I haven’t seen any programme that provides you with an edge without an important expense of money.

The innovation ecosystem in Chile is growing, and I would say there are some forces that have driven that growth. Firstly, Chile has been experiencing an economic growth over the last 30 years, which allows us to buy and develop technology. The Chilean economy is also a very open economy, which allows you to look for external experience and allows you to buy and import any solution off any country, without any problem. Also, since we are an open economy, it also provides you an incentive for Chilean companies to expose themselves to other areas. And lastly, since 2008, the Chilean government has been investing big in improving the tech sector – providing incentives to invest public money in the development of new technologies here, and that has been an important governmental push.

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Pablo Enrique Urrego Hernández, Head of Legal, Diageo Colombia

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.

Technology is one of those elements that will change the world, especially in legal.

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.

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Alejandro Fernández R-B, Head of Legal, Cotemar

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.

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Data Analysis Part One: Size matters

In-house legal teams come in all shapes and sizes: some companies will have small teams, preferring instead to outsource the bulk of their work to external firms, while others have internal legal departments that would outnumber many major law firms. For the purposes of the research that underpinned this report, a small legal team is classified as one with ten or fewer members, while a large legal team is one with more than ten members.

Of the 140 people who participated in our research, 65% of those were from small legal teams, with the remaining 35% coming from larger teams. The attitudes, ability and budgets of these two different groups had a number of notable differences – and not always in the way one might typically expect.

While our research showed that the overwhelming majority of all legal teams in Latin America used specialised legal technology in some form within their department at 96%, the few that didn’t all came from respondents from small legal teams. How that technology was used was relatively similar between the two different groups in most areas – use for factors like contract management, human resources and law firm relationship management was nearly identical. Where large teams did differ was with case management and dispute resolution, where large legal teams were nearly twice as likely to use specialised case management and dispute resolution technology.

The vast majority of our respondents held a positive outlook on the extent that they believed technology could enhance outcomes for in-house departments, with 66% of all respondents believing it can enhance to a great extent and 31% to a moderate extent. Those from larger teams, however, retained an even more upbeat stance than their smaller counterparts: 85% of those from larger legal teams believed that technology could enhance outcomes to a great extent, compared to 56% of those from smaller teams.

Larger teams were also more likely to have a positive outlook on how their department fared compared to their peers. While the majority of small legal teams retained a positive outlook, at 55%, that number was dwarfed by large legal teams, where 70% said they thought that their department’s use of technology compared favourably with other companies.

Interestingly, while small legal teams were much less likely to have received an increase in their technology budget over the last five years compared with their larger counterparts, that didn’t necessarily translate to feeling unsupported by their company when implementing new technology. While only 52% of small legal teams had received a boost to their budget, 90% of those we surveyed from small legal teams felt that their company was supportive. Compare that to larger legal teams, where 74% had received an increase in their tech budget, but only 78% felt that their company was supportive.

Based on the interviews that complemented the quantitative component of the research, the reasons for in-house legal teams feeling supported by their companies were more nuanced than simply being given the green light to purchase new services. Getting buy-in from the wider company was important to a number of those who we spoke with, with a range of factors noted, including assistance with integrating legal systems across the wider business.

While artificial intelligence remained a rarity in legal departments across Latin America, it was currently being used almost exclusively in large legal teams. Those we spoke to who utilised AI tended to have legal teams that were at the top end of large – with upwards of 50 members on their team – and were primarily utilising it in order to either reduce the more menial tasks their businesses required from legal, or to assist in departments that had large amounts of litigation and disputes work.

That attitude broadly aligned with the reason behind technology implementation. Between the two groups, what was most important when considering legal tech was one area where there was a difference. While smaller teams were mostly concerned with using technology to improve the quality of their work, at 69%, those from larger legal teams were less likely to value improvement of quality, at 57%, and put a higher priority on using technology to reduce costs.

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Data analysis part two: Funding the Future

Making a first foray into legal tech can be a daunting experience for some legal departments. For a profession that (whether fairly or not) retains the reputation of being technological luddites, having the support of the wider organisation when taking the first steps with legal tech – or expanding on a positive start – can make all the difference, according to the in-house counsel that participated in our research.

A key element of any support received from the wider business was budget. It’s one thing for an organisation to deliver empty platitudes about wanting to modernise its legal department, but putting its money where its mouth is can be an entirely different proposition altogether. Of the 140 in-house counsel across Latin America that were surveyed during the research for this report, 62% said that their department had received an increase in budget specifically for technology over the last five years.

Getting that increase in budget made a big difference too – both in the use of and attitudes towards legal technology. Of the 62% who had received an increased budget, 95% felt that their company was supportive of implementing new technology, compared to 73% who had not. Those who had received a budgetary boost were also much more likely to have a positive outlook on their department, with 69% saying that technology was a strength of their legal department and 74% saying that their department’s use of technology compared favourably to other departments. Compared to the 31% and 38% respectively for those that hadn’t received an increase in budget, the difference in attitude was significant.

Perception of the impact technology was having on the legal profession differed significantly between those who had, and those who had not received an increase in budget too. Those who had received a boost to their budget tended to have a far more positive perspective on the impact technology had made on the legal profession in the past five years, with 23% believing it had disrupted the profession to a great extent, compared to 8% of those who hadn’t received more budget. Equally, for those who had received an increased budget, only 33% said that technology had disrupted the profession to a small extent or not at all, compared to 54% who hadn’t.

Interestingly, those who had received an increase in budget (and as a result, tended to have more experience with technology – particularly vanguard implementations) were much less likely to think that today’s lawyers are adequately equipped to deal with changes to the profession caused by technology. Only 15% of those who had received a bigger budget thought that today’s lawyers were sufficiently prepared, compared to 31% of those who hadn’t received an increase in budget. Where budget didn’t have an impact was how receptive today’s lawyers were to the use of new technology – only two respondents from each group found that their legal team was not receptive to the use of new technology, despite a difference in opinion between the groups about how well prepared they are to actually utilise it.

Ethical issues were one area where our research uncovered a significant divergence of opinions amongst general counsel. While most of our participants said that their use of technology had not raised ethical issues for their department, there was disagreement around whether these hadn’t occurred for the bulk of our respondents, or whether they were not attuned to the new types of ethical issues that were inherent with a number of these technologies. For those who had received an increase in budget, they were nearly twice as likely as their counterparts who hadn’t received an increase to report on ethical issues – 23% vs 12%. Based on the types of technologies that were being used by those with bigger budgets, it would be reasonable to infer that those who hadn’t received an increase in their budget hadn’t yet been exposed to a number of the ethical issues that were raised by those with bigger budgets.

Our research also found that those who had received an increase in budget and were utilising more technology within their departments, were much more likely to take into consideration how their external firms were utilising similar solutions when assessing those relationships. For those who received an increase in budget, 51% said that it was crucial that their external firms were utilising the latest legal technology, compared to only 8% of those who hadn’t received an increase in budget. Interestingly too, not a single general counsel whose department had received an increase in budget said that it was not an important factor. Compared to those who hadn’t received an increase in budget, where 50% said it was not important or only somewhat important, it’s evident that the attitudes and behaviours internally with regards to technology translated to markedly different approaches to handling relationships with external firms.

In addition, nearly half (44%) of those who had received an increase in budget raised the issue of a firm’s use of technology during external panels, compared to 23% who didn’t. Some of the general counsel we spoke with said this was a critical issue when making decisions around external firms, as they wanted to know that firm’s were working at their optimal efficiency, but also considered whether their own internal systems would align or had the potential to be integrated with that used by their firms.

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Selim Erdil Guvener, General Counsel, International Potato Center (CIP)

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.

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Rafael Dantas, General Counsel and Director – Legal and Compliance Latin America, General Mills

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.

For budgeting purposes, there has been an evolution in our work because we can now predict cases.

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.

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Alejandra Castro and Catalina Morales, Bayer, Costa Rica

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.

‘The law firms that I work with use very little technology in order to provide their services.’

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.