About

‘Because our values are clear, the decisions we take along our path of digital transformation are sound and guided by a single thought; nobody will be left behind’ states Luis Prendes, who leads the global team of lawyers that make up Telefónica’s business legal affairs and legal digital transformation team. While most of the lawyers that comprise this team, including all directors, are based in Madrid, others work from Miami, London, São Paulo and other global Telefónica outposts. Prendes explains how his department has embarked on a ‘crusade to digitise end-to-end legal processes’, an effort which involves ‘an extensive contribution of time and resource over and above that already devoted to providing good-quality and reliable legal advice’. He continues: ‘Our objective is the creation of a platform incorporating enhanced cognitive capabilities that will enable the transformation of fragmented, basic, data into enriched legal knowledge. This in turn will allow us to better serve our client communities within the business and help them deliver their own goals’. His team is using cutting-edge technology to this end, and is in the process of ‘converting the hype of artificial intelligence into practical reality through the development of the first “Legal Unified Data Model” in the history of the Telefónica Group’. This model enables the creation of valuable insights and leverages Telefónica’s legal legacy and archives, in order to ‘benefit our lawyers and ultimately our clients; bringing the power of artificial intelligence to bear on Telefónica’s complex reality’. The Telefónica organisation is divided across four separate platforms, covering network and physical assets, fully digitised and automated processes and systems, technology, contents and digital products and service distribution, and a “Big Data” repository. Prendes explains that his legal team is structured ‘in this same way, with sub-teams providing specialist support to these four business platforms’, which he claims ‘has no precedent in the global legal arena, and has been designed to be a strategic input into the decision-making process within each such platform, with a very clear objective; bringing to the table valuable perspectives and legal security’. The team is the sum of many talented individuals, and in addition to Prendes the department can boast many outstanding lawyers: Iñigo Novoa (covering the first and second platforms), Diego Colchero, Marta Pastor, Manuel Jiménez Larraz and David Giner (third platform) and Óscar Casado (fourth platform). Giner and Casado were both GC Powerlist: Iberia inclusions in 2016 and 2018. The team is rightly regarded as not only as a pioneer within Telefónica, but also within the wider telecommunications and legal industries. Prendes explains: ‘We like to think of ourselves as pioneers of Telefónica. Our plan is ambitious but we believe in its goal of taking Telefónica to a leadership position in the Spanish and global in-house legal market’ – a goal it is evidently on the road to achieving.