| Nextel
Nextel
The current structure of Nextel’s legal department under Flávio Franco’s management has three legal managers: Túlio Barros, litigation, contracts and corporate; Welton Lima, labour, compliance and wiretapping; and Thathyanny Peria, tax. Further, Nextel’s legal department has three legal coordinators: Priscilla Barbosa Galantini (consumer), Hugo Lustre (contracts/corporate) and Aline Silva (wiretapping).
To improve the control of the company’s litigation, we have implemented a new process management tool, as well as another “Jurimetria” tool (legal statistics/BI), providing a more in-depth and sophisticated view of the court case portfolio. In the contract area, we have implemented electronic signature and contract workflow tools, enabling the creation of SLA services with our internal clients. Our goal is to create a “paperless” legal department. In the compliance area, we have revitalised the whistleblowing channel with a more modern tool, as well as a service platform for research and data verification, helping to control suppliers. However, technology is not necessarily a solution in itself. The most important question is how to make the tools contribute to the legal indicators generating value for the company. We also counted on a consultancy working side by side with legal department members that helped us to review the flows, process management efficiency and better use of the systems, which led us to optimise the control of legal indicators and improved the presentation to the company’s senior management.
As we operate in a telecommunications regulated market, legal must constantly be aware of changes in laws and regulations, especially considering Brazil’s dynamic normative reality. Given this high impact dynamic in the private sector, legal also ends up assuming an important role in the government relations and corporate affairs initiatives. At the moment, a point that has been a priority for legal is the LGPD (data privacy new law coming into effect on August 2020) deployment process based on the European GDPR. Data Privacy is the hottest legal topic in Brazil nowadays, considering that a new “heavy” legislation based on the European GDPR coming into effect on August 2020. Compliance obviously will remain as a top trend for many years to come. It is important to mention that, corporate affairs, corporate governance and government relations have also emerged as a new responsibility for legal in several companies and a good career opportunity for many in-house counsels.
Nextel started its activities in Brazil in 1997 focused on IDen technology (radio communication) and was, for some years, a strong reference in the telecom sector, running outside the circuit of the major mobile operators. However, with the fast technology change, Nextel went through a crisis period when its market share declined, as the 3G development gradually turned IDen less relevant over time.
In the middle of 2015, Nextel entered into a severe phase of financial recession and its US holding had to file a “Chapter 11” process in the US. At this time, Nextel was suffering from high levels of consumer complaints and lawsuits in Brazil that were heavily increasing and adding extra pressure on the company’s legal contingency and related costs.
After a period of financial adjustments and with the “Chapter 11” finally over, in 2017 Nextel Brazil underwent through a process of change in the senior management. With the new management (C-level) in charge, it began a phase of restructuring and the adoption of a “customer centric” culture, that is, all planning and related actions truly focused on the customer experience improvement. At the same time and, turning the challenge even more complex, the company has embraced a mandatory low-cost model and a “desert mentality” motto as a budget marker. It is important to note that this tight cost control guideline that permeates the entire company has a very strong meaning in indicating that if we can survive in the “desert”, we can live and prevail in any other environment afterwards.
Amid this whole restructuring process, while the company was still dealing with a large portfolio of consumer lawsuits, the legal department also underwent through a severe process of change, both in terms of structure and operational proposition towards the many challenges ahead. The legal transformation also involved a new leadership taking over, new team design, new governance standards, quarterly goals, adoption of a new performance “Objectives and Key Results” (OKR’s) measurement methodology to which all team is subjected to and, above all, a new way of thinking the legal management itself.
The team has fully opted into such corporate “customer centric” vision as well as the “no neck-tie” approach, adopting a more informal and less bureaucratic workflow, acting very close to other areas of the company. By focusing on building trust every day, it managed to really act at the “basis” of the company’s new strategy, sharing business targets of other areas and taking on the role being and being seen as a valuable “solutions provider”. Technology has also been a key factor on that process as well. The proper implementation of the legal management software increases the accuracy over lawsuits progression and ease the communication between Nextel and the outside law firms. “Business Intelligence” (BI) tools used to statistically analyse consumer lawsuits has increased the judicial outcome predictability, while the development of managerial dashboards have been very helpful to assist decision making.
Accordingly, the results began to emerge fast. Soon enough, it was possible to review and closely track all legal performance indicators, which evolved in precision month after month. Despite all challenges, in the last two years legal, working in fine tune with the other areas of the company, managed to achieve a reduction of 50% of the portfolio of consumer lawsuits, thus contributing to a significant reduction in contingency and an increase in the positive corporate’s financial results of the 2018 and 2019. This outcome has been driven by a strong increase in the settlement initiative, working conciliation before the court proceedings and a strengthening of the partnership with external law firms, with the implementation of variable compensation, SLA’s linked to the performance of settlements and successes in the court lawsuits.