What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

A significant achievement in the company was opening a new office in Ecuador, allowing for greater outreach and a more extensive client base.

We were also successfully assisting one of our oil & gas clients in a multimillion property claim for damages suffered to their drilling equipment, as well as implementing ERM and AML systems for several of our company’s clients.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

The pandemic gave the final push to the legal function to be able to operate 100% virtually. Although there will always be value in having in-person meetings, nowadays, the day-to-day legal in-house activities are achievable from anywhere in the world. This also entails the reduction of actual “paperwork” to almost zero. Contracts, documents and minutes are now reviewed, drafted and signed remotely and via technological applications. Legal risks related to cyber have become and will continue to be of the highest importance, as well as data privacy and management regulations.

The in-house legal function will need to adapt to these new realities and learn to work in a technological environment.

What can law firms do to improve their service to the legal department?

Improvement could be seen by implementing automated solutions for day-to-day problems to reduce costs. It would also be beneficial to develop more sophisticated IT tools to facilitate legal work and to have more inter-disciplinary teams to generate more comprehensive advice.