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

Over the past year and continuing into the present, our legal team has been deeply involved in key projects aimed at optimising management and strengthening the company’s strategy.

We’ve led a comprehensive project to enhance and automate contract management. This included implementing a platform to monitor requirements, standardise contracts, and optimise our clauses. Our primary goal has been to simplify and expedite the legal process for our internal clients, encouraging them to engage with us preventively from the initial stages of negotiations and projects, rather than just when problems arise.

We’ve actively supported various management teams in the digital transformation project. Within this framework, we participated in the relaunch of our corporate website, which focused on a more customer-centric, innovative value proposition with an improved sales channel. This initiative allowed our legal department to deepen its understanding of the company’s added value proposition.

Additionally, we’ve spearheaded and led the personal data protection update project, in compliance with new regulations set to take effect by the end of 2026. This is a crossfunctional project This Project that involves teams from different departments like Human Resources, Compliance, IT, Marketing, and Security, Environment, and Social (SMS).

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

We intensify legal risk mapping, closely monitoring indicators and regulatory changes. This allows us to anticipate problems that could affect our operations or the fulfillment of our obligations. The use of platforms and artificial intelligence has been fundamental in investigating, detecting, and mitigating emerging risks early.

Our team acts as a strategic advisor, collaborating closely with all business units, including finance, operations, and international teams. We provide practical, commercially aware legal advice to support business continuity in critical decisions, such as market entry or exit.

Likewise, we invest in our team’s capabilities in areas where we can generate significant value. For matters requiring greater specialisation, we rely on the best external law firms.

In essence, we actively support business areas in their challenges, seeking joint solutions that allow us to achieve our objectives in complex scenarios. We go beyond traditional legal management, facilitating informed decisions, protecting our assets, and helping the organisation emerge stronger from crises.

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?    

As Legal Department for a company with operations and presence in several countries, and a small internal team, our decision to use external legal services is based on resource optimisation and specialisation. We aim for each internal legal team member to focus on strategic, high-impact business matters where our deep company knowledge is irreplaceable.

Key Factors Influencing Our Decision to Engage External Counsel: Matters demanding highly specialised knowledge are handled jointly with external experts. This not only ensures excellent advice but also allows us to learn from the best in each legal field.

Responsiveness is crucial. When our team’s workload exceeds its capacity, or projects demand significant legal dedication, external firms help us maintain efficiency without sacrificing quality.

Finally, we analyse the cost-benefit relationship of managing a matter internally (considering time, resources, and the learning curve) versus outsourcing, which often offers greater efficiency and experience.

Our evaluation of external legal advisors focuses on: the quality of advice and the commercial applicability of their recommendations; responsiveness, clarity in communication, and proactivity. We highly value those who take the time to understand our industry and strategic objectives, offering tailored solutions.

AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact in how your legal team works in this time?

For our company, where innovation is fundamental, AI is emerging as a game changer that will undoubtedly transform our legal work and the way we advise as in-house counsel. We’re already exploring its potential in areas like contract analysis, regulatory research, minute generation, and risk management. This allows us to automate routine tasks and gain general guidance on new regulations, freeing up our team to focus on high value strategic advice.

We know this is just the beginning, AI’s functionalities are constantly evolving, and we’re all encouraged to explore and dare to use them. However, we’re aware that this evolution requires time, openness to change, and great responsibility. As a regulated company, we approach AI with maximum caution. This involves a rigorous risk assessment (privacy, biases, cybersecurity), the development of clear internal guidelines, and the continuous training of our teams.

AI is already impacting our operations, and our vision is one of progressive and responsible adoption. Our goal is to capitalise on its transformative benefits, always ensuring security, ethics, and strict regulatory compliance.