About

‘Transmitting to the company a certain way of doing business based on your own expertise and the knowledge and your qualifications in law: that’s the biggest impact of an in-house counsel; to build up a way of doing business based on respect of the law’, Jaime Carro says. During his 18 year tenure as in-house lawyer at Inditex and Pontegadea, Carro has led the in-house legal function through a period of significant regional growth. Pontegadea is a real estate investment firm which is part of Inditex, the biggest fashion group in the world. Carro joined the company in 2005 and within one decade he has driven major changes in the legal function. He has organised the procedures regarding real estate acquisitions in line with the presence of the company in other jurisdictions. ‘This was not implemented when I joined Pontegadea. In fact after I joined we opened in several markets where English is the working language. I selected the law firms at the first instance, transmitting our company policies in order to create a kind of expertise and knowledge about us. Through this communication, the local law firm, with the guidance of the local branch and my supervision, can deal with our matters’. Carro sees the breadth of his jurisdictional responsibilities, and the diverse legal environment it encompasses, as among the biggest challenges: ‘I would say it is difficult to be able to adapt to a lot of different countries and legal systems and conceptions of law. I have been dealing with many different countries in Europe, Asia and America. The ability to adapt to those different systems and be able to understand the way the legal framework works there and transmitting the policies of the company regarding the guidelines of the way the company would like to do business has been a major challenge’.