About

Jose Lechuga’s 15-plus years of experience working at prestigious multinational firms places him among the top in-house lawyers in his sector. Formerly with such blue-chip businesses as Carrier Mexico, Industrias AlEn and Mars Incorporated, Lechuga joined Navistar Mexico in 2006 as a legal manager. He has added to his responsibilities steadily since then, and was promoted in November 2017 to the position of legal, compliance and government relations director for all global affairs of the company outside of the US and Canada. Lechuga reflects on his efforts to build and establish the Navistar legal department from scratch upon joining as such: ‘When I joined Navistar, there was no legal department within the four business segments (manufacturing, truck, parts and Navistar Financial). That represented a challenge about understanding different needs and supporting the business to achieve success’. To increase the capabilities of the department, Lechuga quickly took steps to coordinate the function with the wider goals of the business. For him, building a team is ‘all related to setting expectations within members of the department and setting objectives that are aligned with the business objectives’. Though he says that this is ‘hard from a legal perspective, as the legal function cannot be measured in the same manner as other departments’, he states that alignment ‘allows the company to see the department as an important piece of the business puzzle’. A generalist by nature, Lechuga relishes the opportunity to get to grips with a varied workload throughout his career. ‘A particular highlight has been to not only be limited to legal work but also take on other responsibilities that complement the legal function such as compliance’, he explains.