Team size: 60

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

As a starting point, it is very important to have a clear understanding of the company’s strategy in order to align the legal team’s strategy. One of the advantages legal teams have is a broad perspective that comes from being involved in all links of the chain. This gives us access to valuable information from different areas, making it easier to identify opportunities.

Equally important is having the right mindset—often setting aside the traditional “lawyer hat” and understanding that “we are all in sales”. We can act as advisors to the entire company without abandoning our legal perspective, but with a broader, business-oriented outlook. This allows us to navigate crises and be resilient.

What are the main cases or transactions that you have been involved in recently?

We have recently successfully resolved several labour class actions and at least five key constitutional injunctions that were critical to maintaining business operations without major disruptions. Additionally, given that the telecommunications sector is highly regulated, we have had to prevent several multi-million-dollar fines from being imposed during administrative proceedings.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel/in house consel teams contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

For the past five years, we have developed a tool called WaO (Winning as One), which allows us to record, track, and measure the legal department’s contribution to the organisation. This not only helps us adopt a business-oriented mindset, but also enables us to set numerical targets, just like commercial departments. This tool encourages the team to collaborate, engage with other areas of the company, and think “outside the box,” constantly seeking projects that create or protect value for the organisation and contribute to achieving the year’s numerical goals. The result of all the initiatives implemented has generated over USD$120 m. for the organisation.