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 Latin American company, we face constant periods of instability or crises, and the advice of our legal department shall be based not only on legal aspects but also on the political and economic environment. We also use AI to resume thousands of claims of other companies and markets to achieve the best collection of data that will support our decisions. A department fully integrated with other staff areas and business units has better conditions to ensure the best advice.

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

We are being involved in the launching of new confidential services and products, which involves a great time of research and analysis especially considering that our internet related activities are disruptive and usually not regulated or recently regulated. I can mention the implementation of our disruptive logistic model in Brazil as well as fintech services.

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?

AI and robotic process automation are absolutely having a great impact. Considering the great litigation existing in Brazil, we are currently implementing the automatization of the litigation activities of certain legal claims. This consists in eliminating the services provided by an external law firm and launching an internally developed AI management processes system. This will avoid a $600,000 annual cost with legal fees and will bring the in-house team the opportunity to manage claims closely. Our objective for the next years is to expand this solution for all standardised claims.

How do you prioritise diversity and inclusion within your legal department, and what initiatives have you implemented to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment?