About

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 and corporate, under the general supervision of the legal director for Brazil. The business handles all negotiations of contracts with suppliers and clients, while providing full support to sales department regarding the business strategy within market access and sales representative management. Labour and litigation manages all legal proceedings in which the company is involved, as well as provides consulting in labour matters, drives all judicial collection and it’s also responsible for handling data privacy matters. Corporate handles corporate and finance matters, as well as organic and inorganic growth initiatives.

What attributes are essential for an in-house legal team to possess?

Primarily, our core values of curiosity, collaboration, ambition and accountability. Then, our team should strive to truly become a business partner, supporting our areas in the pursuit of their projects, stressing not only risks but also opportunities, in a balanced way. We challenge ourselves to always provide alternatives instead of “no” or “it’s too risky”. Legal is open to discuss the risks alongside internal clients and business partners, seeking for innovative solutions based not only on the legal perspective, but in a broader perspective.

What “legal tech” products does the team utilise? What is useful about the products and how could they be improved?

Yara Brasil was the first business unit of Yara International to implement the CMS system, a procurement platform, within a legal interface to generate synergy among areas. CMS is heavily driven to provide automated processes on creating standard templates according to our clients or partners ERP’s registries. Also, a pilot to launch a chat bot to internal clients and business partners addressing recurrent consulting is at an advanced stage.

Is diversity and inclusion as a matter of internal policy on the agenda at your company? How much influence do you, as an in-house legal team, have on the diversity and inclusion policies of your organisation?

Diversity is a matter of primary concern in our team and in Yara as a whole. The company has fostered several diversity groups to talk about and promote inclusion initiatives, focusing on LGBTQ+, women’s rights, ethnic minorities and people with special needs – most of the legal team participates as “change agents” in diversity groups. It’s interesting to mention that diversity discussions in Yara Brasil started in the legal department, when one of its team members was invited to drive initiatives in order to achieve gender equality – only in an advanced stage the programme was redirected to HR. Nowadays, we are taking the next step by actively surveying our law firms to assess their level of commitment to our diversity values, and to benchmark with them, to see what kind of good practices they have that we could mirror in our own organisation.

Have any new laws or regulations greatly impacted your legal practice?

There have been negative impacts derived from the regulation imposing freight control that has created major distortions for the fertiliser industry, which has historically relied on “return freight” dictated by market forces. Constant price hikes in the natural gas tariffs in the State of Sao Paulo are also causes of concern. The new federal government has championed more liberal policies like the new gas market and the provisional measure fostering economic freedom initiatives.

Focus on…

What i learned from a CEO

There is no doubt that, the in-house lawyer role, including the general counsel, is rapidly changing and sharply expanding into modern corporations. CEOs are demanding their in-house counsel to go beyond the strictly legal analyses and assuming risks and taking decisions.

But how to get there? There are several success factors contributing to promote this change, for example, a totally new proactive behaviour and adequate training. First and most importantly, if you want to succeed as a corporate lawyer, you must have a broader perspective about the vital topics to understand your company. Second, in general, lawyers are trained to sneak into details, therefore we can miss the big picture. In other words, we should remind ourselves to have a broader perspective of the subject.

Moreover, the expression “to understand the business” may sound as cliché, but what does it really means? It is the full comprehension of the business model of your company and its corporate culture. In this sense, I invited the CEO of the company that I work for, Lair Hanzen, to join me into a legal department’s gathering, where several in-house counsel and corporate lawyers from different sectors were discussing relevant and trending topics.

Just after a brief introduction about his profile and curriculum he shot the audience that his perfect counsel would be “less of a lawyer”, but in fact what did it mean? It may sound ambiguous; but it is not. To put it simply, Mr. Hanzen was just looking for someone with a firm position, rather than a traditional lawyer’s general advice and no “legalese” on the speech.

He highlighted the importance of a multidisciplinary education and developing different skills, rather than having only one expert competence. ‘In addition to their technical expertise, the companies need lawyers who challenge the status quo, who understand the daily business of the company, its customers and peers, and who are alignedwith the strategy of the organisation.’ – said
Mr. Hanzen.

Practically speaking here are some things that can be done differently. As much as an in-house develops his/her career in the organisation, the legal background is not enough. The lawyer shall seek to develop a solid knowledge and understanding of the business environment, the values of the organisation, and being able to act in accordance with the company’s strategy.

Additionally, the in-house lawyers should not be limited to the typical lawyer activities. The multidisciplinary education and the proactive behaviour allow the legal department to expand
its scope.

It goes without saying that, lawyers apart from investing in their education, they should have the ambition to get an executive position, for example acting as compliance officer, board secretary, board of director and its committee’s member, or developing relevant roles in corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, government relations, corporate affairs, investor relations and even customer services centre.

In conclusion, the CEO wants this Legal Executive to act beyond the four corners of the contract, it means understanding the law, while acting as a business person, positioning him/herself to protect the brand and reputation of the company and capturing business opportunities. In other words, there is a rise in the number of lawyers accessing the market, therefore, if you care about your career, be a lawyer “without ties”, someone who understands the business needs and be proactive.