Focus on: the challenges of the in-house counsel

Currently, the sharpness of the in-house counsel is more crucial than ever to anticipate risks and to move the organisation to act in advance. To be successful in this task is not only mandatory, a precise knowledge of the businesses and the industry that the in-house counsel and his team are involved in, but also to convince the organisation that the handling of legal, environmental and sustainability risks are equally important for the viability of the business than the business itself. This is the higher value that the in-house counsel can bring to the organisation, and in most of the cases, is not only a theoretical value, but it can also be measured. Finally, to be business oriented in these times, we must include these additional considerations.

The world itself is facing challenging times in the legal, political, and environmental fields, and the situation is especially demanding for those who work in the legal field, because it requires a broad overlook.

Following the social unrests that took place in October 2019 in Chile, and the immediately subsequent Covid-19 pandemic, which by themselves were scenarios where all the in-house counsel started to review provisions in the agreements as force majeure, that otherwise and as important as they are, the parties never intend to use, the country decided to draft and issue a new constitution.

One of the main assumptions of this new constitutional process was to produce a new legal main framework, with no major links or attachments coming from the past, meaning the production of this new constitution will start from zero.

All of us will consider that the issuance of a new constitution that follows the aforementioned assumption, is by essence a legally challenging situation, as the final outcome is not known; in order to be fair, the legal scenario will not necessarily be linked to the new constitution, rather is independent from it. In fact, the major constitutional-legal situations have occurred within the existing legal framework.

On the other side, in the recent times we have seen a lot of legal solutions that, although in most of the cases, adequate from the strict legal standpoint, had guided the company into a trouble path, because they have not considered certain scenarios that only the in-house counsel is able to anticipate, by having knowledge of the risks, expectations of the communities, authorities and in general of the more relevant stakeholders.

In current times the sharpness of the in-house counsel is more required than ever to anticipate risks and to move the organisation. To be successful in tasks is not only mandatory a precise knowledge of the businesses and the industry that the in-house counsel and team are dealing with, but also to convince the organisation that the handling of legal, environmental and sustainability risks are equally important for the viability of the business and to have good business by itself. This is the higher value that the in-house counsel can bring to the organisation and in most of the cases is not only a theoretical value, but it can also be measured.