Team size: Eight

What do you consider the biggest challenge for in-house legal teams today, and how are you addressing it within your own team?

One of the biggest challenges for in-house legal teams today is keeping pace with a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape, while balancing business needs and risk management. With globalisation and digitalisation, regulations have become increasingly complex and diverse, and legal teams must stay up to date with both local and international laws.

Nowadays, legal teams are no longer expected merely to resolve legal issues; they are also expected to be strategic partners in business decision-making. Identifying and mitigating legal risks in a dynamic commercial environment is a constant challenge.

To address this, our team leverages artificial intelligence to optimise contract analysis, stay current with regulatory developments, automate compliance tracking, and enhance risk assessment. AI-driven tools enable us to efficiently review lease agreements, identify potential legal risks, and ensure regulatory compliance with greater accuracy. Moreover, by integrating AI into our workflow, we improve collaboration between legal and property management teams, optimise negotiation strategies with tenants, and proactively anticipate legislative changes that may affect our operations.

Technology has advanced significantly in recent years, and it is our role as lawyers to incorporate it into our daily work—not to compete with it, but to make it our ally in streamlining various internal legal processes that are often operational or repetitive. In doing so, we can focus more on being strategic business partners. That said, it is crucial to remember that these tools are just that—tools. They must always be supervised by a qualified lawyer to identify potential errors, as responsibility for our work can never be delegated to such systems.

How do you cultivate legal talent internally, and what skills do you see as most essential for the next generation of in-house lawyers?

As Legal Manager within the dynamic shopping centre industry in Peru, I recognise the importance of developing strong legal talent internally to ensure that the company remains agile, compliant, and forward-thinking. We prioritise talent development through various initiatives:
(i) Tailored training programmes – we provide ongoing training in areas such as real estate law, commercial contracts, consumer protection regulations, and dispute resolution, all of which are critical to our sector. This is delivered through partnerships with respected law firms, industry professionals, and academic institutions.
(ii) Cross-departmental exposure – to broaden our legal team’s perspective, we encourage our lawyers to work closely with other departments such as operations, finance, and marketing. This helps them better understand business priorities and provide more effective legal solutions.

By nurturing in-house talent and equipping our team with these essential skills, we not only strengthen our legal function but also position ourselves as leaders within the competitive shopping centre industry.