About

Already an extremely highly regarded in-house counsel, Elizabeth Hincapié is clearly regarded as a rising star of the in-house legal world based on the strength of the nominations she received and her performance up to this point as senior legal counsel for Leica Camera. ‘In my position as a senior legal counsel I have achieved a number of important goals under general counsel Florian Schäfer. In addition to advising on the expansion of the group, in particular with the foundation of two new subsidiaries in Germany and in Spain along with a new Leica Store in Madrid, I have worked on the modernisation of our dispute resolution strategy and the design of new adaptive arbitration clauses according to the type of contract and counterparty. As well as this, I have designed and coordinated with IT a new task manager in order to facilitate the tasks of my general counsel at a glance by means of statistics’. Hincapié possesses a deep sense of social responsibility that, in conjunction with her legal skill, allows her to assist others: ‘As a Colombian lawyer in Germany, my professional life has been on a constant challenge. But just as a calm sea has never made a skilled sailor, the setbacks I encountered led me to my greatest achievements, such as my bar admissions in Germany and in Spain. As a result of my experiences, I identify the necessity to assist foreign lawyers in Germany, who are seeking advice. Furthermore, I wanted to not only be mindful about the difficulties of being a female-lawyer to climb up the career ladder but to do something about it; the result is a promising project to be launched soon’.