Brazil Teams 2019
Supported by the Association of Corporate Counsel
| A. P. Moller Maersk Group
What is the legal team’s structure? After the Hamburg Sud Group acquisition, the company’s legal departments across South America were merged into one centrally controlled team with regional segments. In...
| Accenture
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured? The legal team in Brazil is organised by function. A commercial team, called sales and delivery, is responsible for negotiating...
| Ajinomoto do Brasil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal department is divided into the following areas: legal, intellectual...
| Amcor Flexibles Latin America
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The Amcor legal team in Latin America is a flat organisation...
| Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM)
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Patricia Ulian joined ADM in May 2018 bringing a new conception...
| Atvos Agroindustrial
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The department is composed of three lawyers and one paralegal who...
| Banco Modal (Modalmais)
Plínio Pistoresi leads a team composed of outstanding lawyers, namely: Leticia Namie handling dispute resolution matters, Eduardo Horita focusing on credit collection and Emanuel Correia as ombudsman.
| Biogen Brazil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Our team is built only with senior legal and compliance professionals....
| BrasilAgro
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Our team is headed by our general counsel and CCO, Mariana...
| Bravante
Larissa Veloso C. Santos Brechbühler leads a small but very active legal department with Fabio Cunha focusing on civil litigation matters and Juliana Siqueira on labour litigation.
| Bunge South America
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? We have structured the legal department on three pillars: in one...
| Cast Group
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Currently the structure is responsible for Legal and Contract Management. I...
| China Construction Bank - CCB Brasil
China Construction Bank is the second largest Chinese bank and among the top ones in the world. Five years ago, it bought BIC Banco, a traditional Brazilian bank with a...
| Cielo
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured? Our team is structured with corporate, M&A, contracts and IP; litigation; governmental relations; and regulatory affairs. The four managers reports...
| Companhia Brasileira de Aluminio
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is separated into three major areas. Each area...
| Concentrix
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The structure of the legal department: one head of legal who...
| Discovery Networks Brasil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is divided in two main areas. Business affairs,...
| Essilor
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is structured by sub-region, then country and most...
| Formitex
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Amira Chammas is a lawyer who graduated at Mackenzie University, post-graduated...
| Fresenius Medical Care
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The Brazilian legal team of Fresenius Medical Care reports directly to...
| Grupo Abril
As the head of Abril’s legal team, Candice Buckley leads a group of very talented attorneys, including Mariana Macia, a seasoned and very skilled lawyer who handles April’s strategic matters;...
| Grupo Verzani e Sandrini
What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years? The team has led a strong reduction in litigation...
| J.P. Morgan
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Managing director and senior legal advisor Márcio Bonfiglioli has taken on...
| Janssen
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? My direct reports are responsible for supporting all business structures mainly...
| JTI Brazil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The team works as a single cell, with no segregation of...
| Klabin
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Klabin’s legal department is divided into three management areas: Corporate, with...
| Logicalis
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal and compliance department aims to support the decision making...
| Marsh
Marsh is the worldwide leading brokerage company. Daniela Frangioni is the head of legal and compliance for Brazil and South America. She handles all day-to-day legal aspects of the brokerage...
| Microsoft Brazil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Our CELA – corporate, external and legal affairs team in Brazil...
| Mitsui & Co Brasil
How important have “soft skills” or personal attributes outside of technical legal skill been to the team’s success, and which “soft skills” do you feel are most important for an...
| MWM International (Navistar Group)
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? As a lean legal department it is important to us as...
| Nextel
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The current structure of Nextel’s legal department under Flávio Franco’s management...
| Oi
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The team is led by Thalles Paixão, who is the final...
| Olympus Optical do Brasil
In Brazil, Vivian de Moraes Simoes works with Carla Ortuzal, head of the legal department, a corporate attorney with substantial in-house legal experience in Latin America. She handles strategic contracts...
| Oracle Brazil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Marcio Silveira is the senior vice president, regional general counsel and...
| Polo Capital Management
Felipe Salgueiro Novaes leads a small but experienced team, with Mariana Pedrosa and Victor Rocha focusing on credit recovery matters, and Pedro Machado handling distressed assets.
| Profarma
Profarma is the most diversified player in the health sector in Brazil, which has grown constantly starting with distribution and, for more than five years now, very active in sales...
| Shell Brasil Petróleo Ltda.
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The team is responsible for handling all disputes the Shell Group...
| Souza Cruz
Daniela Vilhena leads a team of 30 attorneys that is responsible for more than 5,000 lawsuits (totaling an amount of approximately R$5bn), providing more than 4,000 legal opinions to the...
| Suzano
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is structured into four different management teams: Corporate...
| Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is one of the world’s most trusted provider of answers for customers in law, tax, compliance, government, and media arenas, acting in 140 countries. It is at the...
| TIM
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Our tax department is structured in four axes: Tax planning, consulting...
| União de Lojas Leader
Carolina Matos Costa Bayão leads a very active legal department with Laura Afonso Cataldi handling contractual, real estate and corporate matters, Amanda Christinne dos Santos Mello focusing on criminal, civil...
| Usiminas
What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years? Our internal legal team, along with an external law...
| Vale
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is composed by two lawyers in charge of...
| Vale Tax
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The Brazil tax planning team has, besides its manager, four tax...
| Volvo do Brasil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is formed by nine lawyers; one paralegal; two...
| Walt Disney Company Brasil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal department of The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) is structured...
| White Martins
Julianna Toscano is the head of the legal department and works with the support of Fernanda Amorim (litigation manager), Marcelo Santos (indirect tax manager), Ingrid Azevedo (tax operations manager) and...
| Yara Brasil
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? The legal team is divided in three areas, business, labour, litigation...
Since first being published as The Corporate Counsel 100, The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist series has grown exponentially since its beginnings in 2013. It started by covering four of the world’s most established legal markets, and whilst the core objective of the publication – highlighting the most capable,
outstanding and innovative in-house counsel in a jurisdiction – has remained the same, the reach and scope of the GC Powerlist has since become almost unrecognisable. Now present in a vast array of jurisdictions and with a portfolio of 70 unique editions, the GC Powerlist series has gone from strength to strength and has firmly been established as the “go-to” title that assesses and features leading corporate counsel across the globe.
Not content to rest on our laurels, we at The Legal 500 are evolving the GC Powerlist series even further, deepening our commitment to ensuring not only the widest geographical coverage, but to highlight and explore issues and challenges at the forefront of the minds of leading in-house lawyers. Therefore, this and future editions of the GC Powerlist will have a very diff erent look to their predecessors. Instead of profiling individual counsel or in-house legal teams, more incisive insights from in-house thought leaders
on the topics of the day will be featured extensively throughout our new look GC Powerlist publications.
This new look entails the publication of Q&A transcripts regarding legal and business challenges, comment pieces on specific industry or regulatory affairs, more detailed analysis as to where the market is heading and content related to soft-skills, work ethic and business relationships that general counsel utilise. This new format will not only provide more thought leadership and insight, but provide more clarity on what is driving legal business forward in each market that we cover.
In the GC Powerlist: Brazil Teams 2019, we showcase the considerable strength of the in-house legal market in Brazil. This talent is demonstrated in this edition’s compliment of in-house legal teams representing the innovation, adaptability and technical versatility that encapsulates the Brazilian inhouse
legal market.
This market is known for its changeable pace and this year has been no exception. Our interview subjects explained significant changes in terms of privacy, trade and tax laws as well as adaption to political volatility and the impact of the 2018 truck drivers’ strike. Despite this seemingly disruptive atmosphere, the Brazilian in-house legal market has been keeping up with global trends in innovation particularly around diversity and inclusion policy, legal technology and team management technique. This edition features a range of legal teams of different sectors, sizes and functions and showcases a high level of expertise. I offer my congratulations to this year’s entrants and thank them for their insights.
2019 is drawing to an end. Not the happiest end, but also not the worst.
Although many expectations regarding the performance of the current administration failed to materialise, very important steps towards the recovery of our economic growth have been taken, among them the reduction of the bureaucratic requirements that hampered entrepreneurship in Brazil and the restructuring of our social security system. Hopefully, the results will start to be noticed in 2020. In the meantime, companies are still struggling to survive in a cash strapped environment.
Such scenarios highlight the importance of a skilled and determined legal department, acting in close cooperation with management, to be able to deal with the challenges posed by an economy that is starting to recover, though still remaning weak and vulnerable.
Versatility, innovation, pro activity are some of the key aspects of a successful legal team that shall be always alert to risks and opportunities. The legal teams nominated for this year’s GC Powerlist: Brazil meet or even exceed such requirements.
We from Castro Barros are happy and proud to team up again with The Legal 500 in honouring ourcolleagues who are pursuing careers as in-house counsel, and are hereby well represented by the nominees for this 2019 event. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
Yours truly,
José Augusto Leal
Castro Barros Advogados
The 2025 edition of the GC Powerlist Colombia, held at the elegant Casa Medina in Bogotá, brought together some of the most influential general counsel and in-house legal leaders from across the country and region. The event highlighted how Colombian legal departments are evolving to meet the demands of an increasingly complex, tech-driven, and sustainability-conscious business environment. Key themes throughout the day included the strategic adoption of AI and legal tech, lean but agile team structures, shifting approaches to external counsel, and a strong commitment to ESG and inclusive leadership.
One of the most prominent discussion points was the integration of legal technology, particularly AI and large language models, into in-house legal work. Across companies like Uber, Unilever, Takeda, and GFT, there is strong momentum around the use of AI tools for contract lifecycle management—ranging from clause extraction and risk flagging to version control and automated drafting. However, rather than viewing AI as a replacement for legal professionals, most GCs described these technologies as strategic enablers that allow their teams to focus on higher-impact work. Laura Jaramillo Franco of Bayer provided one of the most detailed insights into how her team has deliberately structured their AI use. She emphasised that the value lies not in using AI for its own sake, but in tailoring each tool to specific use cases that align with legal risk standards and data protection policies. Tools such as Harvey, myGenAssist, Claude, Notebook, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Gamma are all part of Bayer’s ecosystem—each selected and implemented with clear purpose and governance.
Legal design was another emerging theme, with institutions like Scotiabank and Unilever investing in simplifying legal documents to make them more accessible to non-legal stakeholders. This is especially relevant in consumer-facing sectors where clear communication builds trust and mitigates risk. There is also growing interest in predictive analytics for litigation and compliance risk mapping, as legal departments seek more proactive ways to support business decisions.
Despite the growing influence of technology, staffing models remain lean. Most legal departments consist of teams ranging from three to nine professionals. However, size is no longer the defining factor of effectiveness. Instead, agility, business-embeddedness, and cross-functional collaboration are key. General counsel from companies such as Scotiabank, Cargill highlighted the increasing involvement of legal leaders in crisis management and business strategy, often working side by side with finance and communications teams. Upskilling, especially in technology and leadership, is an area of active investment, with Uber, for instance, noting formal programs aimed at equipping in-house lawyers for this evolving role.
The event also revealed a shift in the use of external counsel. In-house teams are now more confident in handling complex matters internally, including regulatory strategy, litigation, and M&A. Companies such as SierraCol and Bancolombia highlighted that while law firms remain essential, engagements are becoming more selective and strategic. The focus has moved from transactional work to long-term partnerships that add specialized value or support cross-border challenges.
Sustainability and ESG responsibilities continue to expand within legal departments. Legal leaders are increasingly central to ensuring compliance with ESG frameworks, advising on disclosures, and shaping product strategies aligned with social impact. Viviana Prada Rey of Grupo Cibest shared how her legal team plays a key role in advancing the company’s mission to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. From advising on sustainable finance initiatives to monitoring ESG-related regulatory developments in both Colombia and the United States, the legal function has become instrumental in driving long-term impact.
Another area of strong focus was crisis resilience. Legal teams are leading scenario planning and designing compliance playbooks, ensuring they are prepared for unexpected events. Leadership and inclusion also featured prominently. Companies are integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into their legal team strategies. Juliana Hoyos Flórez, General Counsel of SierraCol, discussed the company’s ALMA program (Academia de Liderazgo para Mujeres de Alto Impacto), which has empowered over 180 women across the company and community with leadership skills and is expected to reach 300 by 2026.
In conclusion, the GC Powerlist Colombia 2025 was a testament to the transformation of the legal profession in the region. Far from being reactive support functions, today’s legal departments are strategic, tech-savvy, socially conscious, and embedded at the heart of business decision-making. As demonstrated once again, Colombia’s in-house legal leaders are not just keeping pace with global trends—they are helping define them.
