As the saying goes, “Ask a hundred lawyers and you’ll get a hundred answers”. Ask over a hundred lawyers about legal tech and the picture becomes even less clear. The legal tech ecosystem itself is so fragmented that almost no two GCs have the same thing in mind when talking about their use of technology.
Some companies are, to varying degrees of sophistication, implementing forms of automation or AI to solve legal or contractual issues, others are partnering with law firms to produce software capable of handling very specific issues like ISDAs, CLOs or loan documentation. But those applications of legal tech remain in the minority. Clearly, there is a distinction between legally useful technology and legal tech. Some basic elements of every office’s software suite can be legally useful, though they are not generally badged as legal tech.
The results of our survey show that by far the most common use of legal tech, shared by nearly a third (32%) of teams, was contract management. However, the overall picture is one of a market still in its infancy. Respondents were as likely to use tech to manage relationships with their external firms (17%) or handle invoicing (14%) as they were to do automate legal advice.
Notably, these trends affected companies of all sizes: those employing more than 50,000 people and with legal teams with over 100 staff were no more likely to use advanced legal tech than small to medium-sized organisations. This should come as no surprise. Even companies that specialise in developing very sophisticated technology face the same issues as their less technologically advanced counterparts when it comes to finding solutions for the legal team.
As one respondent representing a Hong Kong-based tech and IT solutions company commented, ‘As a provider of services then of course [the business] will have all this fancy technology, but most companies are much more sophisticated at developing things for clients than for themselves. As a user, as a GC using software to do something, you are in the same box as everybody else.’
Clearly, more money is invested in the revenue-generating side of a business than on its support functions. As experimental psychology has shown time and again, people naturally favour making gains over protecting losses, and businesses seem to be no different.
‘Take a large bank,’ continues our respondent. ‘It may have well over 1,600 lawyers globally. That bank is effectively running a top 20 law firm in terms of its legal staff, and that’s before you even consider its far larger compliance team. Yet when you look at how it is doing its legal work it will be nowhere near as sophisticated as a law firm. To understand why that should be the case you’ve got to consider that the law firm is practicing law as a business whereas the in-house counsel is a cost. Anything that solves a problem for in-house counsel therefore needs to be quantified as a cost saving when proposed to the business, which makes it much harder to justify.’
‘Even the most persuasive pitch for new legal technologies looks unappealing to most businesses because all you’re doing is comparing one cost with another cost: the cost of technology vs the cost of salaries to do the same job. Either way you’re reinforcing the view that you are a drag on the business that will incur costs! It’s not at all true – those are jobs that need to be done, but it’s how people will see it.’
Innate risk aversion when it comes to corporate budgeting is only part of the story, however. Part of the answer to why GCs struggle to acquire technology lies within the legal team itself. First, lawyers tend to be poor at understanding and explaining their technology needs. They may understand their legal needs very well, but this does not necessarily translate into seeing what sorts of tools they need to accomplish that end.
As another respondent pointed out, it also requires a lot of time and no small amount of skill to adequately benchmark legal tech. ‘Even doing the work to see whether an automatic translation service for legal documentation is efficient if automated and whether that can be measured in terms of efficiency gains is not something I would expect many GCs to successfully handle. Lawyers are generally terrible at that sort of exercise, which is a procurement exercise we are just not trained in.’
But – and this is neither the first nor last time this will be said about the subject of legal tech – a change may be about to come.
Over two thirds (68%) of those surveyed said that the use of technology within the legal team had increased significantly over the past five years. Just 5% reported that their use of technology had not increased at all. The bulk (95%) of respondents though that legal tech would end up significantly enhancing the day-to-day operations of the legal team, while nearly three quarters (73%) said they would like to step up their use of technology.
Perhaps a clearer indication of this change is that, for all their cynicism over tech, GCs are not disputing that it has changed the profession – 87% of respondents said that legal tech had already changed the industry to at least some extent. Even more strikingly, 95% of GCs felt legal tech would change the industry in the coming years, with 33% saying that the change would be significant.
Networking, as any diligent MBA-holder will tell you, is essential for an eye on corporate leadership. But finding the time to network is often the last thing on a busy lawyer’s mind.
How things change.
Several months into lockdown, finding effective ways to network has become the only escape route from sliding into set ways of doing things. ‘Remote work is the future of work’, says Amar Sundram, head of legal for RBS India. ‘That means we need to come up with new ways of forming and building relationship and keeping on top of changes in the way other organisations are doing things.’
Nowhere is this truer than the world of legal technology. For many GCs, keeping up with the pace of new technology was challenge enough. The pandemic has only made that job more difficult. As a result, a growing number of GCs are seeking out new forms of community building, networking and peer learning to help them cope. Suddenly, professional learning networks (PLNs) have become all the rage.
Across Asia Pacific, a raft of dedicated tech networks aimed at training and educating GCs has sprung up, from the Australian legal Technology Association (ALTA) to the Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP) in Singapore. These organisations do many things, but all of them aim at a common goal. As Josh Lee Kok Thong, chair of the Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (ALITA), puts it, they ‘encourage lawyers to take learning into their own hands, to be more interested in the technology and other disruptive forces that can affect their work’.
As peer networks become an increasingly important way for GCs across Asia Pacific to engage with legal tech, we canvas some of the leading institutions, and their members, on what it means for lawyers’ engagement with technology.
Master PLN
Among the largest informal member networks is the aforementioned ALITA, a regional coordination platform that seeks to promote legal innovation and technology initiatives. The organisation launched in 2019 with a bold mission statement to make Asia a hub for legal innovation. It is, says ALITA’s Singapore-based chair Josh Lee Kok Thong, the first truly Asia Pacific wide legal tech forum.
‘This was a great chance to bring together a vibrant ecosystem and show the significant advances in the development of legal innovation and technology in all countries across Asia Pacific.’
‘While each country has its own legal tech networks, we felt the cross-border interaction was missing. We wanted to give a voice to the region, to promote collaboration opportunities across the region. The results so far have shown just how much progress can be made when GCs and thought leaders from different countries work together to share experiences, context and opportunities.’
ALITA has grown rapidly to around 150 member organisations in 20 countries. The membership includes some of the world’s largest law firms and technology companies, as well as universities, think tanks, legal tech companies, and governmental or quasi-governmental organisations. It is also fast becoming a leading platform for the region’s general counsel.
Narae Lee, lawyer, Bliss Law Office
Narae Lee is a Seoul-based lawyer at Bliss Law Office and an organiser at Seoul Legal Hackers, a separate discussion forum for issues arising at the intersection of law and technology. She recently joined ALITA’s steering committee and says the regional focus will be invaluable to the GC community.
‘Legal Hackers is an international organisation, so I already had the benefit of that cross-border perspective. However, when it comes to the use of legal technology there are nuances of context that matter. As counsel in Korea I will have a very different set of pressures, expectations and possibilities to someone based in Europe or the US.’
‘Generally, it’s useful to have a forum that looks at what other people facing these same issues are doing. The best way to learn about legal technology is to speak with others who are using it and know what it can and can’t do.’
Though still relatively young as an organisation, ALITA is already expanding its activities to create what Josh Lee Kok Thong describes as ‘probably the world’s first legal tech observatory.’
‘Just as an observatory contains a set of tools that help stargazers absorb data and information, draw patterns, and observe movement, we are creating a set of tools to help the legal community scan the Asia Pacific region. Above all, we want to make it a live observatory that feeds people with information on the initiatives that are taking place across Asia, so that actionable insights can be drawn.’
State of the future: Singapore’s bid to become a legal tech hub
The Government of Singapore has set its sights on a new and unexpected industrial development plan: developing the island state into a legal technology powerhouse. GCs speaks to the people looking to make these plans a reality.
Since gaining independence in 1965, Singapore has pioneered an economic model like no other. By combining a free market and open-economy with strong government involvement, the island state has grown at a breakneck speed to become, on a per-capita basis, one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
The lessons of this economic model, poured over by policy makers and business analysts ever since, break down to three things: decide what you want to be a world leader in, back the industry so it has all the conditions needed to thrive, and stay the course.
Singapore’s legal market has been following this rule book for at least two decades. First, in the early 2000s, foreign lawyers were permitted to set up Joint Law Ventures (JVLs) with local firms, a move then Attorney General Chan Sek Keong said would make it a ‘one-stop shop’ for cross border transactions. Since then, the government has been a staunch supporter of its legal industry, developing a world-class arbitration infrastructure and a judiciary that is unparalleled in the region.
When Singapore launched Asia’s first legal technology start-up accelerator in 2019, it was legal tech’s time to take the limelight. Backed by generous research grants, ambitious accelerator programs and direct financial support, Singapore’s legal tech providers had become the latest champions of future prosperity.
If you build it, they will come
When it comes to legal technology, GCs often face a dilemma. While many know what they would like technology to do, they often find themselves disappointed by the marketplace. In short, there is a huge gap between the legal technology that is available and effective now, and technologies with the potential to be truly disruptive.
It was precisely this dilemma that led Singapore to establish The Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP). Now under the aegis of the Singapore Academy of law, FLIP first emerged out of discussions at the Committee on the Future Economy (CFE), a governmental body founded in 2016 to help Singapore’s economy adapt to the market conditions likely to prevail over the coming years.
Paul Neo, Singapore Academy of Law’s chief operating officer, says the initiative helped draw attention to the economic potential of legal tech.
‘A lot of people knew there were all these bottlenecks in the legal market caused by poor adoption or adaption of technology, but the hard evidence was missing. We needed to take the lay of the land and understand the market through surveys and discussions, which we distilled into our “101 Industry Problem Statements”. That had a number of positive effects in terms of understanding the market, but it also allowed us to show potential investors the huge demand out there, emphasising the rewards available should these problems be solved.
‘A lot of technologists focus on fintech rather than legal tech, so this initiative helped to display to them the opportunities available in legal tech innovation. While there were already a lot of tech accelerators in Singapore, none of them were focused on legal tech, which has its own unique issues. To build one, we had to partner with existing accelerators who knew how to scale companies and had general business know-how, to which we added in our legal expertise.’
That led Neo to found the Global Legal Innovation Digital Entrepreneurship Program (GLIDE). In its early days, the initiative was aimed at Singapore’s investors, but the ambitious attempt to turn legal tech into an investment class has caught the attention of investors far beyond the island state’s borders.
‘Whenever I visit London, law firms and legal community builders want to know about the marketing work being done by the FLIP program’, says Chan Zi Quan, co-founder and CEO of Intelllex, a Singapore-based law tech startup offering an intelligent knowledge management system that allows lawyers to search for, store and share knowledge. Quan, who sat on the minister’s committee during the early days of FLIP. ‘They can see the beneficial effects it is having and are interested in replicating its success.’
Quan, who sat on the minister’s committee during the early days of FLIP, says that while the idea of legal tech providers receiving state funding may seem unusual, it was exactly what the market needed to take off.
‘The legal industry is rather fragmented when compared to other sectors. For example, in shipping or manufacturing there is much more consolidation and it is not at all unusual to see the government step in and offer support. But for a tech provider that caters to all sort of businesses, from SMEs right up to blue-chip global companies, it is much more difficult to make a case for that level of support.’
‘This sort of government support has really boosted our legitimacy. The due diligence they conduct on suppliers has really helped grow community trust.’
While Intelllex itself was deemed too mature to benefit from FLIP or GLIDE – it was, says Quan, ‘founded before there was even a term like “legal tech” to describe what we were doing’ – it was recently approved as a preferred supplier by Tech-celerate For Law, a support scheme for the adoption of technology solutions launched by the Law Society of Singapore, in partnership with Ministry of Law, Enterprise Singapore and Info-Communications Media Development (IMDA). The programme aims to help Singapore-based legal entities compete in the global marketplace, underlining the government’s commitment to its vision of a tech-enabled legal marketplace.
Under the Tech-celerate programme, Singapore-based legal practices are awarded 80% of the costs for any new technology implemented for the first year of use, allowing vendors much-needed time to establish proof of concept and refine their offering.
The infrastructure put in place by the government of Singapore has also attracted tech talent from other markets. Workflow automation software provider Checkbox was founded in Australia in 2016. It has since grown at an impressive rate, tripling its user base over the past year. But, says co-founder and CEO Evan Wong, its experiences in Singapore were transformational.
‘We were part of a competition at TechLaw.Fest that involved a number of rounds of pitching at the conference after a rigorous vetting process. After winning this, it really helped to lift the profile of the company and allowed us to move into the GLIDE program. From there, things started to really take off for Checkbox in Singapore.’
The road ahead
Even more ambitious plans are underway to make sure Singapore is at the forefront of legal tech. The government has made a bold statement through its S$15 million National Research Foundation grant to the Singapore Management University (SMU). This will see the creation of a new Computational Law Centre and research program at SMU, fulfilling SMU Principal Investigator Wong Meng Weng’s strategic vision for the development of legal technology at the University.
Jerrold Soh, assistant professor of law, SMU
The Computational Law Center ambitious flagship project will attempt to build a domain-specific language for law, something Jerrold Soh, assistant professor of law at SMU, says has far-reaching implications for the legal industry.
‘The analogy I would use is that we are doing something similar to what Adobe did with PDFs. Computational law is essentially expressing legal rules as computable units that can be calculated through logical operations. Our project starts with a basic tool, the domain-specific language, and builds legal tools on top of this. For example, someone writing a contract would be able to define the terms and mechanisms in a code-like language so it can be understood by the system. You could then run a check to see if it contains logical errors or has terms not defined’.
‘More importantly, you could also port this code-like language over to various natural languages. Once you have it in a condensed, pure logical form it’s easily translatable between different languages at once. Mandarin to English is doable, for instance, which will have many applications’.
These developments in computational law would not only improve the efficiency of legal tech, but could represent a sea-change in the capabilities of human-machine interfaces more broadly. But, as with most ambitious projects, it remains a moonshot. ‘It sounds like we’ve got it all figured out, but we haven’t’ says Soh. ‘It’s a big research project that will take a lot of time and effort to accomplish’.
With the Government of Singapore now backing legal tech, finding the resources to accomplish these ambitions should not be a problem.
These ground-up attempts to share information sit alongside more formal initiatives to develop awareness of legal tech organised by the region’s academic institutions. Perhaps the most advanced of these is The Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP) run by the Singapore Management University and the Singapore Academy of Law. FLIP has issued a series of roadmaps on the future of legal innovation in the Asia Pacific region, which were highly praised by the GCs we spoke to for this report.
Australian institutions have also been notable for their activities to promote legal tech. The country’s largest postgraduate legal practice education provider, the College of Law, runs the Centre for Legal Innovation (CLI), a legal innovation and tech think tank focusing on emerging legal practice, future legal tech, innovation and entrepreneurship in the legal industry.
The focus throughout these activities, says CLI executive director Terri Mottershead, is on practical actions, and while CLI is actively monitoring market trends, it is ‘more interested in understanding how to those trends can be translated into solutions.’ For example, CLI offers a programme called Reinvent Legal Business, which looks at the various changes that have been taking place in the industry, covering everything from in-house initiatives to the work being done by law firms and alternative legal service providers.’ One of the biggest shifts across the profession, says Mottershead, has been the growing interest in technology among lawyers.
‘We have seen a real shift in the uptake of technology, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. As part of our Digital Literacy series we are looking at how we can provide support for lawyers to use technology effectively and help them understand how it can be incorporated into their practice.’
Sheldon Renkema, general legal manager, Wesfarmers
CLI, which has branched out from Australia to establish bases in New Zealand and Singapore and, more recently, the UK, does not operate like a traditional network. It offers the bulk of its courses and services for free ‘to help promote the sharing of information’. Recently, it has been devoting more time to vendor-led demonstrations of the newest legal tech from around the world.
‘It’s not intended as a sales pitch’, says Mottershead. ‘It is an opportunity for tech developers to explain the gap they sought to bridge and how they did it, while also giving them a chance to listed to the needs and feedback of end users.’
‘In fact, we have noticed that many lawyers are receptive to seeing how the technology works. The demos have been popular, and we have been holding more and more of them to help meet demand. That suggests to me that lawyers have a big appetite to understand the systems and tools that are available to them.’
Sheldon Renkema, general manager for legal at industrials conglomerate Wesfarmers and the Australia regional co-lead for the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), has a similar take on the value of per-to-peer learning in a fragmented legal tech market.
‘One of the great things about CLOC is that you can very easily learn from what others are doing, so that you’re not reinventing the wheel. You are learning from others’ experiences so it’s a really good forum for embarking on that journey, connecting with people who’ve been through similar experiences and being able to benefit from their experience [of] the things that have gone well or not gone well in that specific context’.
Haebin Lee, research manager of the crypto finance division, Block Crafters
‘It’s very difficult to actually objectively assess whether what [legal tech providers] are saying their product or service delivers is actually what it delivers. Being able to leverage the experience of people who have used those products and services to see what the actual output is very helpful’.
Across Asia Pacific, universities and academic institutions are rolling out a variety of courses that bring aspects of IT and computational thinking skills to a legal audience, alongside a much wider number of courses that teach lawyers about the business impacts of tech and innovation. Some, such as the Singapore Management University, have gone further and now offer combined law and technology degrees.
Haebin Lee, research manager of the crypto finance division at Korea-based Block Crafters, agrees, and gives weight to the idea that membership organisations are the best way for GCs to move the industry forward:
‘There should be more a lot more discussion on how we should shape legal tech, and which direction we should take with new technology. That’s what we’ve been striving to do through Seoul Legal Hackers and ALITA: open up a room for free discussion.’
Path of least resistance
Free discussion and knowledge sharing are changing the way GCs learn about and interact with legal tech, but at a certain point this enthusiasm for change hits hard problems. As Nilanjan Sinha, head legal for Indian multinational banking and financial services company ICICI Bank, observes:
‘Legal tech, perhaps because of the mindset of lawyers, is not as disruptive a space as it could be. The problems have been identified, and various solutions have been proposed by service providers. The hope is that as people become more used to using tech and working from home there will be a greater uptake, but there remain obstacles.’
‘Senior management needs to buy in to a particular way of working for new practices to become widespread. As GCs we have a big responsibility to oversee and facilitate that change within the team.’
An even bigger problem, and one identified by many of the regional organisations we spoke to, is that lawyers’ mindsets need to shift before the profession embraces technology. As Sinha notes, ‘It may take time but there will be greater efficiencies on an ongoing basis if we make the effort now.’
New Ways of Working
Near universally, the global pandemic has forced a fundamental rethink as to how many of us live our lives, be it personally, professionally or otherwise. The legal sector in Asia-Pacific has proved no exception, with the past year providing an impetus for innovation and an acceleration of technology-based solutions.
‘Technology is not only changing how lawyers work on a day-to-day basis; it is reshaping some of the most fundamental aspects of law,’ says Vinay Ahuja, Partner – Indonesia, Lao PDR & Thailand and Head of Indonesia Practice at DFDL Tax & Legal.
‘Consider the huge changes that have taken place in courts across Asia. As someone who grew up and practised in India until 2010, I can safely say that it has come as a big surprise to see India’s courts embracing virtual hearings!’
While virtual courts may be one of the most immediately recognisable changes to legal practice – particularly for those outside of the legal sphere – for both in-house counsel and their law firm counterparts, the day-to-day differences in regular work habits are perhaps even more pronounced.
‘Today, law firms are typically arranging for client meetings and negotiations to be carried out via video conferences, while webinars are frequently being arranged for a range of purposes, including external seminars for clients, as well as internal training sessions for lawyers within the firm,’ says Zhuowei (Joyce) Li, partner at Han Kun Law Offices.
‘The COVID-19 pandemic has made organisations more reliant on technology than ever and as a result, when using technology tools for remote work, privacy and security have become a more critical issue.’
Concerns around privacy and security are unsurprisingly not limited to law firms. Cybersecurity was one of the most frequently cited concerns related to technology that the in-house counsel who took part in the research for this report raised, with the sensitive nature of legal work, in addition to the risks associated with data breaches, both front of mind.
‘With the emergence of new technologies and more broadly, changes in business trends, in-house clients are increasingly moving towards technology-enabled services,’ says Janet Toh Yoong Sang, partner at Shearn Delamore & Co.
‘This has resulted in new and different inquiries coming from clients, with advice sought on issues around data security and risks associated with the use of technology-enable services, as well as an uptick in the number of clients conducting risk assessments of third-party technology providers before consideration of services for contracting can begin.’
These issues speak to the need to establish new frameworks to deal with technology-related issues and are translating to a rise in new types of work for private practice lawyers. Multiple WSG member firms have reported that they are being instructed to advise clients on legal issues arising from the use of technology in remote working scenarios – including the issuance of guidelines for video conferencing software and collaborative working applications – a trend that all expected to continue to evolve as businesses and law firms alike come to terms with new ways of working.
There are signs that this resistance to change is slowly fading, however. Josh Lee Kok Thong, himself a millennial, says a new generation of lawyers across Asia is coming to the table with quite different expectations from their predecessors.
‘The millennial generation is going to be key. We are going to hold key decision making roles in organisations, law firms or in-house departments in a few years’ time. Once that happens there will be a fundamental shift in thinking in terms of how legal services are going to be provided’.
Besides which, the writing is clearly on the wall. Technology will play an increasingly important role in how lawyers deliver their advice, whether lawyers like it or not. But more importantly, when it comes to the law, the medium is the message. As Mottershead notes:
‘At the moment, we see legal tech as a tool that assists us in doing things more efficiently, but over time, that will develop or will actually provide different ways of delivering legal services altogether. It will inform decision making processes and create the opportunity for additional or new revenue streams.’
At which point, even the most conservative of lawyers will see their interest piqued.
A tech-savvy company does not necessarily have a tech-savvy legal team. Nor, for that matter, does it necessarily encourage the use of tech among support functions. But a supportive environment is at least a start. It is refreshing to see that 81% of respondents said their companies were supportive of the use of technology in the legal function. At the same time, 67% thought their companies were more supportive than their rivals. At least 18% of them must be wrong…
But this support has not necessarily translated into financial backing: nearly half (45%) of GCs said that insufficient budget for was the biggest barrier they faced to obtaining technology for the legal team. Knowing what to buy among the many systems available is also becoming problematic, with 73% of GCs either unsure of what technology was available or feeling that there was no suitable third-party tech to meet the legal team’s needs.
There are also cultural barriers to implementing legal tech, sometimes in surprising places. Japan may be the home of everything high-tech, from robots to video games consoles, but its businesses still lean heavily toward tradition when it comes to ways of operating. Angela Yuen, deputy general counsel at JERA, Japan’s largest power generation company comments:
‘In every Japanese organisation there are more layers than an onion. For instance, taking an approval system from paper to electronic format can be a huge task because under the old system of internal approval there will be a large number of steps required at various levels and no one wants to be cut out of a decision.’
‘Furthermore, while people in Japan embrace technology, the legal field has been slower adopting legal technology due to a conservative, careful approach. I think these are two significant factors in why Japanese corporates have been slower to embrace legal technology’.
The long and costly road
When it comes to wish lists for new technology, GCs are looking for either a simple efficiency boost (38%) or readily customisable software (24%). Surprisingly, value for money (15%) and ease of use (10%) were not big concerns for GCs looking to implement new systems. Clearly, legal teams accept the road to tech-enabled efficiency gains will be long and costly.
But the costliest of all solutions, advanced automation and AI, have yet to gain traction with Asia Pacific’s GC community. Only 23% of those surveyed said they were using an advanced tech solution in the legal team, with many deterred by concerns over the cost and reliability of the such systems (29%), difficulties finding the right software (20%) and their own lack of product knowledge (21%).
There was also a healthy degree of scepticism on display. ‘The maturity of AI solutions for legal work is lacking, and I think there is more marketing hype than real AI solutions on the market’, comments Bernard Tan, Asia Pacific managing counsel at Agilent Technologies. There were also concerns that more advanced software would generate more risk for the business. As one respondent commented:
‘There are a number of advanced technology options, but none so far have I found to be absolutely effective. Those that do exist seem to create another layer of liability, which can add to the responsibilities of the legal team. No single tech platform is able to resolve multiple issue, regardless of what their sales teams claim.’
There have, however, been positive experiences. Ivy Wu is head of legal for Greater China at American business-to-business IT service provider DXC Technology. Recently, DXC signed the largest-ever managed services partnership agreement with UnitedLex, giving them access to a suite of advanced legal technology systems.
‘The AI-based legal research translation tools mean we accrue significantly less time and cost penalties when compared to having a dedicated department for this task’, Wu comments. ‘A document can be translated very quickly and will only require a very simple manual double confirm, which is very useful for some litigations, especially international ones which require a lot of translation. The feedback from the business from seeing this data is very positive because they are able to see the cost saved by the legal department is greater than our budget’.
Friend or foe?
GCs may not be using advanced technology en masse right now, but they are keeping a close eye on developments in the field. More than half (55%) were concerned that legal tech would disrupt the in-house job market, while just over a third (38%) felt that lawyers were well equipped to adapt to technological changes within the profession.
But, as Susan Cattell, senior legal operations manager at AMP, concludes, the end game is not lawyers being made redundant, but lawyers learning to do things more effectively.
‘I look forward to the disruption of the industry when we get this right, as when we do, the possibilities of better service to the end-clients, lower cost processes and better managed teams should promote an even better working environment.’
Lawyers across the world like to talk about rubber stamping things, even though few who qualified in the last 15 years will have seen a rubber stamp let alone used one to certify a document. But, as we found out speaking to GCs across Asia Pacific for this special report, when a lawyer in that region talks about rubber stamping something, they often mean it literally.
‘Most documents I deal with require physically stamping,’ lamented one Indian GC. ‘Even if you want to automate some part of that process in the end you will need to get a stamp. That means a trip to another office, a taxi ride somewhere else in the city, a long wait in a queue. All to get that piece of paper stamped.’
India may be notoriously bureaucratic, but the problem was far from unique to that country. GCs from Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and even ultra-efficient Singapore told us of cultures rooted in face-to-face contact, deference to senior decision makers and established hierarchies. As a result, even that simplest of legal technologies, the electronic signature, had failed to take root.
The obstacles facing GCs who wanted to introduce technology felt unmovable. Until a pandemic hit. After nearly a year of lockdown, businesses across Asia have embraced new ways of working.
To understand just how much lawyers have adapted to tech in these strange times, GC magazine teamed up with World Services Group to survey over 100 of Asia Pacific’s leading general counsel. We asked them about everything from the impact of Covid-19 on the legal team’s efficiency to their use of AI, how they find the right software (and the money to buy it), and their expectations of outside counsel when it comes to technology.
We found evidence of a region that is almost uniformly embracing technology, a region where even the most entrenched cultural habits may be coming to an end. But let us not get carried away.
Any discussion of how GCs in the Asia Pacific region are using legal tech is liable to fall into the trap of focusing on culture first. Certainly, this special edition shows much evidence of country-specific traits that are restricting or encouraging the use of technology, but it also shows that GCs the world over are facing the same issues when it comes to technology.
Broadly, there are three steps involved in the acquisition of legal tech, all of which are things lawyers have historically struggled with: Knowing what’s out there; understanding and benchmarking the capabilities vs the cost, and convincing the business that it is going to save time and money. Until GCs get to grips with these procurement-driven approaches to buying technology their successes in finding suitable platforms is likely to remain limited.
On behalf of all of World Services Group, I am delighted to welcome you to the third edition of our GC special reports, looking at the importance and impact of technology on the legal profession.
This issue of the report is indeed a timely one, as at no point in our professional lives has the profound effect of technology been more evident. Since the onset of the pandemic, private practice and in-house counsel alike have universally transitioned to new ways of working largely driven by technology, demonstrating on one hand the adaptability of the profession, while on the other, dispelling tired notions of lawyers as technological luddites.
As the legal leaders featured throughout the report illustrate, innovation – particularly as it pertains to technology – is apparent in every corner of the profession. Just as we saw in the first two editions, neither budget nor business size need to be obstacles to innovating, with much of the counsel-driven development originating from little more than an idea and an opportunity.
Yet as we celebrate the shared successes seen across the legal industry, we must remain cognizant that innovation is a journey on which we will never reach a final destination. And with evolution emerging from every corner, it would be all too easy to rest on our collective laurels instead of continuing to build on the progress made. So, while we look on at the innovators and their accomplishments detailed throughout the report, we should also consider what we can do to foster and facilitate the emergence of the next wave of visionaries, set to take the profession further still.
Here at World Services Group, we want to embody the change that we advocate for. As an organization, we have seen that investing in technology, talent and corporate sustainability best practices that foster social and economic development are essential elements for ongoing business success – all of which represent key commitments I have made for my tenure as Chairman in 2020-21. By taking a strategic approach to our proprietary digital platform, empowering emerging leaders across our network, as well as improving training and accessibility to technology for all our membership, World Services Group is committed to ensuring that we are properly prepared to capitalize on the growing wave of technological innovation, for the benefit of both our members and clients.
In closing, I’d like to thank all of those in the legal community who contributed their thoughts and insights as part of the research for this report. By sharing your own lived experiences along this journey, I have no doubt you will help to shape and inspire the coming generation of leaders and innovators, set to once again disrupt the idea of what it means to be a lawyer.
Legal tech is becoming big business in the Asia Pacific region, so much so that the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) has opened a legal tech accelerator. But much of the industry’s focus remains on selling to law firms. For GCs and in-house legal teams, making sense of the myriad systems can be a daunting task.
It is no surprise then that GCs would like to see law firms doing more to help them make sense of the market. While more than half of respondents to our survey (62%) said their external firms were using technology to deliver legal services, under a quarter (23%) said their firms had offered to share information on how technology might benefit their legal team’s operations.
‘Law firms need to demonstrate the value to in-house teams of adopting technological solutions’, noted one respondent, a Hong Kong-based legal manager at an international consumer goods company. ‘Right now, I think the focus of law firms is using technology to improve their bottom line rather than creating value for clients.’
Another respondent, an Indonesia-based head of legal at a large insurance provider, added: ‘It would be great if the external firm could also offer the service of helping in-house teams find the right legal tech solution for their team. They are often far more aware of the trends and services being used in the market so this would really help us understand things.’
Given the clear client demand, it is surprising that law firms are not seeing the opportunity here. Then again, law firms themselves may have a lot to learn. Just 22% of respondents were satisfied with the technology being used by their external firms.
Law firms should take this dissatisfaction seriously – 94% of respondents said it was important for law firms to keep up with new technologies, while 59% said they had started assessing their firms’ use of technology as part of their formal panel review process.
The incentive for law firms is clear. While legal tech is often seen as a disintermediator, disruptor or challenger to the established order, it does not have to be treated as a zero-sum game. As Susan Cattell, senior legal operations manager at Australian financial services company AMP, notes: ‘Clients and law firms have to work together to ensure the right tech solutions have been put into place and that they benefit both parties.’
At the best of times, the role of the in-house counsel is marked by loosely defined and ever-expanding boundaries. It is part of why the role demands a sufficiently flexible and open-minded candidate in order to be done effectively.
Enter COVID-19: norms of business and the global economy have been thrown into turmoil as countries across the world struggle to balance the need to control the flow of the pandemic with economic survival.
As of the start of August, four of the top ten countries for confirmed cases of coronavirus are Latin American. Businesses working in the region will be as pressed as businesses anywhere to weather the storm, adjust their practices and adapt to whatever world in which they find themselves operating after the peak of the pandemic has passed.
How do in-house counsel across Latin America feel about the effects of the pandemic? What have their experiences been? How do approaches differ between counsel and across businesses?
In The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist: Latin America Survey, we asked counsel working in the region all of these questions and more.
Status Report
While the pandemic hasn’t exactly affected all countries equally, most of the in-house counsel surveyed for this report could agree that it had affected their work, and that of their legal team.
46% of respondents felt that the COVID-19 pandemic had affected the output of the legal team to at least a moderate degree, with 20% feeling that the impact had been ‘great’. The single largest group were those who felt that the pandemic had ‘slightly’ impacted their legal team’s output, at 37%.
All but a small number of in-house counsel working in their country’s defense sector reported that them and their teams had been working from home during the pandemic.
“Communication was repeatedly emphasized in the interviews conducted with general counsel from across the region as being of particular importance in adjusting to entire workforces being taken off-site.”
‘I think everyone would agree that working from home under these circumstances would be ideal,’ said one GC working for an aviation and defense contractor within the region.
‘But for us, it is not permissible. We are working with documents and files that are highly sensitive, and that cannot be risked in remote working. Many of our employees are given a special government pass to be commuting during the pandemic.’
The majority of respondents (76%) felt that home-working had been ‘highly’ effective, and another 20% characterized home-working as having been ‘somewhat’ effective. The rest felt it was too difficult to say; not a single respondent reported feeling that home-working had been less than effective.
Measuring success remotely
This data begs the question: how can the effectiveness of home-working be properly gauged?
It’s a question which takes on added import among the speculation that this period of remote working will extend beyond the pandemic if not become the norm entirely. Despite virtually all respondents reporting their team working from home since the start of the pandemic, just over half (58%) said that they had been monitoring the effectiveness of homeworking for their employees.
For many, the proof is in the pudding:
‘We manage to complete integration projects and M&A initiatives in a record time,’ says Alejandra Castro, head of legal at Bayer, based in Costa Rica.
‘The feedback of the business is that the team is not only very responsive but also very involved in every company’s decisions. Home office has increased the overload of work in the organization but we have manage to keep performance on track.’
But the work doesn’t always speak for itself, particularly when the benefits brought by having a competent legal team are often difficult to quantify. In these instances, broader brush strokes are required when attempting to track how the team is coping under pandemic pressure.
‘We have shifted to goal based work, improved communication and knowledge sharing practices across the regional legal team, keep each other updated on target completion and adopted legal project management practices to keep everything on track,’ says Jorge Hirmas, general counsel at Orica.
Communication was repeatedly emphasized in survey responses and the interviews conducted with general counsel from across the region as being of particular importance in adjusting to entire workforces being taken off-site.
Ana Haynes, general counsel at Essilor in Brazil, said that they monitor home-working ‘through video calls, through the delivery of many work demands, through constant feedback and phone and video interactions, as well as surveys performed by our company.’
Sheila La Serna, Chief Legal at Profuturo, shares her organisation’s approach amongst the pandemic in Peru: ‘From the outset of the Sanitary Emergency Declaration and Social Isolation declared by the Government of Peru, we conducted daily videoconference meetings first to assess how the team was keeping up with their current home office situation, what needs they had (i.e. accesibility to our systems or physical attendance to the office, and health status) and furthermore, set a schedule considering housekeeping and child care hours since the majority of our members in the legal department arewomen.’
‘Also, the CEO and senior management shared with the teams some podcasts with updates con health monitoring, challenges and quick wins during the COVID-pandemic. From June 2020 on, we had a twist for good knowing that “no size fits all”: we agreed on having virtual sessions twice a week only,to review how we started and finished the week, but we kept communicating one -on -one by Whatsapp (legal department chat and individual chats), email and mobile when necessary.
‘After that, the team´s motivation rose because they felt they had more flexible time to spend with their families,and I saw a change on our productivity measured by quicker responses made and greater number of emails that were replied during the day.’
One common sentiment was that there has been a realization (or validation, in many cases) that employees are just as effective when working from home, particularly when properly supported by the organization.
‘[We have] follow up conference calls and meetings,’ says Catalina Gaviria, legal vice president at SBS Seguros in Colombie.
‘Nonetheless, we are confident that our team is composed of great people who are very professional and committed to the result of the company! Therefore, more than conducting follow up meetings to tasks (which we do), during these times is always important to keep a warm contact. We usually use video to see each other, we ask daily how we are, talk about our personal and family concerns. We even celebrate special dates as happy birthdays of the team, by sending food and celebrating!We are convinced that a happy team always provide great results and are always effective, open, and available.’
Mental health
The COVID-19 pandemic comes at a time where an increasing amount of attention is being paid to health and wellbeing at work. The legal profession is in many parts of the world associated with long hours and high pressure, and despite a prevalent myth that these concerns do not exist in-house, general counsel must be careful to ensure they and the teams they lead are taking care of themselves.
Just under half (49%) of all respondents to the survey sent out as a part of this report felt that in-house counsel have appropriate resources available to them in order to assist with stress or mental health issues, and 37% answering in the negative.A little over half (54%) of respondents reported that their organization has an employee mental health policy.
Of those who reported their organization having such a policy, the most commonly cited feature of the policy in use was the specification of a chain of command or point of contact for support. The second-most commonly cited feature was flexible working arrangements.
“Just under half (49%) of all respondents to the survey sent out as a part of this report felt that in-house counsel have appropriate resources available to them in order to assist with stress or mental health issues.”
When asked to identify the leading causes of mental health problems for in-house counsel, the most commonly given answer was the high stress nature of the job (68%), followed by long hours (57%).
Now, thanks to COVID-19, the workforce is remote, which means the line at which work ends and recreation begins is even more difficult to manage. This was a concern expressed by many participants in this research, but just as common was a feeling that the pandemic has given teams the opportunity to explore how to keep their motivation and mental well being high.
‘We have been in constant communication with team members within my region, and also with the rest of the members of the Law Function within Cargill across the globe,’ explains Michelle Canelo, legal director at Cargill in Honduras.
‘We have been monitoring feedback we receive, how are people feeling, dealing with the challenges that came with Covid-19, not only work related, but with new challenges from home with family. being mindful of the needs of our team members, providing them with resources, accessories that could make their job at home more easily, for example, coordinating that team members received the chair, their docking station, monitors, files needed, printers, headphones, etc from office and deliver to their homes, so that they can work better and take care better of their posture, their overall health.
‘We’ve been also talking about mental health and how we can support each other, listening, talking of our challenges, etc.we even had happy hour every month, getting together virtually at the end of the day, and sharing, a cup of coffee, a glass of wine or other, and a good non-work related conversation.’
Lasting change
For the in-house community, the upheaval of 2020 has manifested in a variety of ways.
The practically universal uptake of home-working for the duration of the pandemic is an easy example. But the in-house counsel surveyed also pointed to other areas that have seen change.
For example, respondents largely reported being more likely to renegotiate obligations with business partners as a result of the pandemic: 71% said they would be more likely, as opposed to 16% who said they would not; the rest were undecided.
45% of those surveyed said that they expect the way in which external firms will deliver their services to change as a result of the pandemic, compared to just 26% who did not expect any such change; the remainder were undecided.
‘I expect external law firms to be more proactive, more efficient, more agile and for their business understanding to improve,’ says Ricardo Estrada, senior lawyer for the wider Latin America region at GlaxoSmithKline.
‘I also think they need to be open to provide support 24/7 and to team with other external law firms and forget about how to compete with them, rather [focus on] how to team up for work.’
‘We are already living a change,’ emphasizes Sheila La Serna at Profuturo.
‘Most of the firms we work with have acknowledged the importance of adding value to in-house teams during COVID pandemic. Webinars, live or recorded and podcasts with legal content are now trends in many firms to keep clients engaged.
‘Delivery is definitely quicker and it is expected to continue that way.Legal service will not disappear in the near future but I think that digitalization of the services, blockchain and artificial intelligence will challenge traditional law firm service sooner or later.’
As for homeworking, counsel were almost united in their expectations going forward: 77% said they expected homeworking to become more frequent, and another 17% said they expected it to become the norm. Just 2% said they expected the pre-COVID status quo to persist.
Regulation is taking over the agenda for in-house counsel across Latin America, according to the results of the 2020 GC Powerlist Survey: Latin America. Almost 70% of respondents reported that the sector in which they are operated is highly regulated – 92% said that their sector was at least moderately regulated.
What’s more, 85% of all respondents said that they expect regulation in their sector to increase in the next five years, with almost half of that number (37% of all respondents) expecting a great increase in regulation. Virtually no respondents expected regulation to decrease in the next five years, and just 14% expected no change at all.
‘The explosives industry is highly regulated and for very good reasons,’ says Jorge Hirmas, general counsel for the Americas at Orica.
‘The regulations in the different countries of the region are similar and of a high standard.Some important aspects of our industry regulations and the means of implementing them could be improved, however, in most countries there are plans currently underway to address these gaps.’
The numbers reveal a complicated relationship between in-house counsel, their businesses and the regulations that are governing their conduct. Taken as a whole, the in-house counsel that participated in the survey were cold on the prospect of more regulation in their sector: 42% said that they thought more regulation in their sector would be a bad thing, compares to 23% who thought it would be positive. Those who came from highly regulated sectors we most likely to see increased regulation as a bad thing: half of those from such sectors said that more regulation in their sector would be a bad thing, as opposed to just 18% who thought it would be a good or great thing.
‘Regarding regulation, it is required because we owe fiduciary duties and so we are regulated on investment limits and eligibility of investment assets,’ explains Sheila La Serna, chief legal counsel at Profuturo AFP. ‘However, there are always aspects that can be improved in regulation now that we are facing more digital relationships with our clients.’
Overall, counsel reported that their companies were well prepared for the event of a regulatory investigation: 76% said that their company has a response plan for such an event. Predictably, those that came from highly regulated sectors were more likely to have a response plan (89%) as opposed to those who came from sectors with less regulation (66% for those in lightly regulated sectors, 79% for those in moderately regulated sectors).
The belief that strategy is critical to dispute resolution is one of the few things that businesses across Latin America have in common.Everything else, from an organization’s appetite for conflict, to its preferred method and forum are all up for grabs.
Even on the question of where responsibility for resolving a dispute sits within an organization, GCs are divided: just 61% of respondents to our survey said that disputes were the responsibility of the general legal team, with others saying responsibility should fall either to a dedicated disputes attorney/team (25%), to external counsel (11%).
Given the large range of approaches towards dispute resolution across Latin America, what can be gleaned from the insights of in-house counsel working throughout the region?
Current Disputes
To gauge how much time and attention disputes and contentious issues are taking up on the agenda of Latin American in-house counsel, survey participants were askedabout how their disputes volume has changed over the past two years, and how they felt it was likely to change in the coming months.
Our survey shows dispute volumes have been stable over the past 24 months, with 62% of in-house counsel reporting that their portfolio of disputes has been consistent over this period. Just under a quarter (24%) reported an increase, while only 12% said that the level of disputes within their business had decreased.
However, when asked to look ahead and state their expectations for the future, GCs painted a very different picture. Well over half (65%) of respondents said they expected an increase in the number of disputes that their business would be involved in over the next 24 months, with just 3% predicting a fall in disputes over this period. Around a third (31%) expected no change.
Disputes aside, the impact of current events was clear: 81% of respondents reported that their team had become more likely to be consulted on employment matters within the past twelve months, and it seems likely that employment actions in the wake of COVID-19 was the main driver of this.
Further, 66% of counsel reported that their company has entered into discussions with their business partners to help renegotiate each party’s obligations due to the COVID-19 pandemic; 71% said that COVID-19 had made them more likely to do so.
Again, this suggests an increase in the level of contentious issues being dealt with by the legal team in the present time, either resulting from a failure to meet payment obligations or other failures to meet contractual obligations. On the other hand, such willingness to enter discussions with partners in the supply chain suggests an amenability on the part of in-house teams and their businesses to taking a practical, lenient approach to commerce during the pandemic. Many businesses are feeling the crunch, and with reduced capacity in courts and dispute resolution venues across the globe, there may be little to be gained from a steadfast insistence on contractual rights.
Methods of Disputes
When asked what type of dispute resolution methods they or their team had employed in the previous 12 months, in-house counsel across Latin America showed a tendency toward litigation, with 64% having been involved in a major litigation over the past 12 months. Arbitration was the next most common answer, at 38%, followed by mediation at 27% and ‘other’ at 11%.
But one common sentiment to come out of the interviews conducted for this report has been that alternative methods of dispute resolution – the likes of arbitration and mediation – are beginning to become a key part of the in-house toolkit.
‘I really think that mediation is a great way to solve disputes,’ says Sandra Gebara, Legal, Compliance, Risks and Corporate Affairs Director at Via Viejo in Brazil. I am using mediation very often in my company, in [matters such as] civil, labor or property disputes and the results are more efficient in terms of costs, time and the mood of the parties involved. It is an effective and, usually faster dispute resolution than litigation. It works better in certain jurisdictions of Latin America than in others.’
Similar sentiments were expressed in favor of arbitration.
‘Our organization firmly believes in the benefits of arbitration as a means of conflict resolution,’ shares Ana Maria Florez, general secretary and corporate legal director at the Cardiovascular Foundation in Colombia.
‘So much so that 90% of the contracts the company enters into have an arbitration clause. Its permanent use has led to the establishment of this practice as a mandatory institutional policy.Therefore, disputes are resolved in the arbitration courts.’
However, efforts to avoid disputes were clearly just as important to in-house teams as which forum might be best suited to the resolution of conflict. This has become an especially pressing consideration given the stress on the court system and other dispute resolution venues in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘At 3M we work a lot in preventing [a situation] getting to a conflict that would need a third party “court” or an “alternative form of dispute resolution”,’ says Ivan Loynaz, general counsel at 3M Mexico.
‘Getting to the point in which a discussion turns into a legal fight [is a bad outcome]. We work a lot in prevention, and we work a lot in partnering with the business to avoid or mitigate the risk of getting to a moment in which we have to go to court or arbitration. Of course, we cannot [always] avoid it. But we do everything in our power, and again always observing the right ways and the law, to not get there. To negotiate and to enter into an agreement over the contract and to keep our commercial process as clean as possible from all of that. Most of the time we get it: we do not have a lot litigation and we do not usually take or choose arbitration as the means to resolve a conflict. That is because we do not get into those conflicts at the end. We solve those conflicts before. There are just a few cases in which a situation would end in court. That is the way we see it. This does not mean that we do not believe other alternative ways of solving conflicts. We do believe in them, and we have participated in dispute processes around Latin America.’
Remote Access
The disputes sphere has been under particular pressure to adapt and reinvent itself over the course of 2020. With entire populations quarantined indoors for large chunks of the year, courts have had to find a way to deal with the growing backlog of hearings while balancing the risks associated with gatherings in public spaces. For example, Colombia postponed all but the most urgent of proceedings and introduced videoconferencing for judges; Chile has introduced remote hearings and prioritized cases relating to pandemic management; other countries throughout the region have introduced similar measures.
But as the normal dispute resolution infrastructure buckles under the pressure of varying levels of isolation and quarantine across the region, there may be an opportunity for in-house counsel to explore other avenues of dispute resolution: taking your place in a long queue to embark upon litigation that will be heavily disrupted by COVID-19 is not likely to be enticing for businesses and their legal teams, especially if an alternative is available.
Judiciaries across the region have implemented remote-access policies for pandemic-era dispute resolution, albeit to varying degrees. The case for this makes itself: the courts will not be able to cope if every potential party to a dispute waits for a future time where the pandemic will not be a factor. However, there have been a number high-profile incidences of video conferencing software being compromised (be it through user error, software bugs or something more sinister altogether), so how do in-house counsel view the prospect of remote dispute resolution?
When asked how comfortable they were in using remote-access courtrooms and alternative dispute resolution services (such as remote arbitration during the pandemic, for example), answers were mixed. 63% were at least somewhat comfortable with the prospect, although 39% in total were only ‘somewhat’ comfortable – the single most-common answer. 21% reported being somewhat uncomfortable with the idea, and 2% said they were very uncomfortable.
When asked what, to the extent that they are uncomfortable with the idea of remote dispute resolution, was their biggest concern, the most commonly cited reason was a lack of face-to-face time with the opposition, followed by cybersecurity concerns. Privacy, confidentiality and a lack of infrastructure were the next three most common reasons given.
‘Any dispute resolution mechanism works upon negotiation and therefore, the lack of face to face time decreases the possibility to read the opponents reaction,’ explains Melania Campos, legal director at Grupo Garnier in Costa Rica.
Choosing a Venue
Another factor comes from the fact that the region is made up of closely connected but independent economies and governments. It means that senior counsel in the region often oversee very distinct yet geographically close jurisdictions, so their opinions on the viability of alternative methods of dispute resolution will likely depend on the infrastructure available to them in their jurisdictions.
‘One of my biggest concerns is about local arbitration/dispute resolution mechanism in highly corrupted countries, where there is lack of objectivity during the process,’ says Michelle Canelo, legal director at Cargill in Honduras.
‘In that sense, for certain countries we have decided not to use arbitration. On the other hand, when we use arbitration as a dispute resolution mechanism, we may feel more confident using an international headquarters.’
For example, those counsel who were based in the United States (yet having responsibility for countries within Latin America) were almost all very comfortable with using remote access dispute resolution infrastructure, whereas those based in Colombia were most likely to have reservations about using remote dispute resolution. Similarly, when asked where their preferred seat of arbitration would be, the most common answer for GCs across Latin America was the United States, with Chile a close second.
‘On some other occasions, we may choose formal arbitration within an arbitration centre,’ explains Loynaz at 3M Mexico.
‘Generally speaking, we would only choose centres we trust and only in cities within which we have a presence. In some occasions where the issue is more global, you might be pulled into the next stage, but that is not very common. As I said, we spend a lot of time making sure we do not get to that point.’
The responses to The Legal 500 and GC magazine’s GC Powerlist: Latin America Survey illustrate the far-reaching and continuously expanding role that in-house counsel are playing in their businesses across the region. General counsel are a multitool, able to step in and assist their company as needed. But this also means that the differences between in-house roles are becoming more distinct: the portfolio of one general counsel might look very different from another, even in the same jurisdiction.
For example, as a part of the survey, participants were asked about the role they play in their organization’s technology investment policy. When asked how involved they were, nearly as many characterized themselves as ‘very involved’ as they did ‘slightly involved/not involved at all’ (30% and 29%, respectively).
Similarly, though the majority reported being ‘very involved’ in the event that the company needs advice on debt restructuring (72%), the second-most common answer was that the legal team is never consulted in these scenarios (14%).
‘Yes, I am proud to say that my team is very responsible with their work and with the company,’ gushes Alejandro Fernandez, head of legal at Cotemar in Mexico.
‘But how they are showing commitment is amazing. They just do not comply with their daily activities, but they interact with other areas to provide support – even if there is not related to legal performance.’
The versatility of in-house counsel has come to the fore over the course of 2020, but a widely held view among the Latin American in-house counsel interviewed for this survey is that the challenges of this year have merely given the opportunity for lawyers to demonstrate a level of adaptability and utility that was always there.
‘It has just confirmed that we are committed and always business oriented, and very creative in addressing difficult times, such this one,’ says Catalina Gavivria, legal vice president atSBS Seguros in Colombia.
‘We are always asking about business results and we know that if we deliver our work quickly, it will facilitate business.’
When asked what he’d learned about his team over the past year, Jorge Hirmas, general counsel at Orica in Chile, pointed to ‘resilience, the capacity to adapt and quickly adopt change and perform under unprecedented strenuous and stressful circumstances’. The words ‘adaptability’ and ‘resilience’ came up a lot over the course of the research conducted for this report.
‘Resilience, empowerment, independence, high accountability’, were the words offered by Pablo Urrego at Diageo.
‘Creativity is a part of our job’, says Alfonso Videche, regional legal director for Colgate-Palmolive.
