About

The highly regarded in-house legal team covering Latin America at Emerson is an integral piece of the Fortune 500 ranked manufacturing business’ organisation, supporting every area in the region and every department. In recent years, the group has negotiated important contracts, established clear and user friendly processes and created the culture for important discussions to be aimed at protecting shareholder value. Rafael Pagliuso de Andrade, vice president and general counsel for Latin America, leads the specialist team of nine lawyers including Rodolfo Garcia, associate general counsel Latin America and Agustina Allen, senior counsel South America. Garcia was responsible for reconstructing the Mexico legal group and has been responsible for ‘raising the bar’ with respect to internal customer satisfaction and quality of work according to Pagliuso de Andrade. Allen, on the other hand, has been responsible for assuring that the lawyers in her region are not only recognised as lawyers, but business partners providing accurate legal advice and sound business opinions. Pagliuso de Andrade highlights that ‘law departments are in a moment of transition and breaking stigmas: We are transitioning to become business partners rather than just lawyers and we are breaking the stigma that lawyers are not good for business. Additionally, we have done all this with a lean organisation which optimises the use of outside counsel’.