What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

During this year, we have worked on large-scale projects, involving a series of open fronts, multiple parties, and both concurrent and post-closing obligations; challenging us in contractual, real estate, corporate, and commercial matters. The orchestration of the different stakeholders to accomplish the objective is always a challenge and requires a clear vision from legal on how we want them to interact to ensure the success of the business, and the values with which we want to achieve it.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

The resilience of any organisation is tied to maintaining a level of calm that allows each actor to do its part and ensure continuity during a crisis. Good preparation allows us to anticipate what can be foreseen, freeing up space for moments that require controlled improvisation and rapid learning. This way, a legal area must distinguish itself by always seeing things with perspective and keeping the focus on the ultimate goal, which is to protect our investors and the company’s principles. This perspective enables us to identify, assess, and correctly convey the risks, both immediate and long-term, which in turn makes it easier to determine the level of urgency and importance of the issues.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

There are two factors that influence our decision the most. The first is the level of expertise that the matter requires; and the second is the influence of the deep knowledge of the business on the success of any given situation, where the purely legal aspect is only one of the factors that the legal team has to ponder. Matters that require high levels of specific legal expertise lead us to believe that outsourcing to a trusted provider adequately safeguards the interests of the organisation and allows the in-house team to move forward on issues that have more to do with business insight, internal collaboration, objectives, creativity, and general guidelines. In these cases, it should be internalised, since in-house knowledge provides a determining value, not only in terms of content, but also in terms of speed and alignment.

Looking forward, what trends do you foresee in the legal landscape over the next five to ten years that companies should prepare for?

The first trend involves embracing the opportunities that the digital and technological revolution promise us, mainly the freeing up of time, which will allow that specific resource to be used for better understanding of the business, to hone new skills, and finally expand the scope of legal in-house by reaching deep into our organisations, consolidating us as essential strategic partners and complementing our current role.

The second matter will be navigating the high level of regulation we are experiencing, involving the implementation of plans, models, and protocols. This puts a lot of pressure on the legal areas that, not only have to adapt to new rules but also communicate them to the rest of the organisation in a practical, and sustainable way. After the implementation comes “living by the rules” in a way that they do not hinder but help and protect our employees and our purposes. The challenge will be to achieve this development at company level, owning rather than viewing it as mere compliance or a burden.