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Andrea Convalia

After graduating from law school at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, I began my legal career as many lawyers do: in private practice. I spent four years with Leighton & Compañia, where my clients were the biggest banks in Chile. I represented them at court, and also assisted their internal departments in M&A and real estate. After my time in private practice, I actually stopped practicing law, and became a stay-at-home mother; I also spent that time trying to become an entrepreneur – but (fortunately) I failed! It was during this time that I realised what it is I truly love to do, and that is to practice law.

However, I decided I did not want to return to private practice, and instead started looking for in-house counsel roles. In 2009, I was offered a role with Cencosud S.A., one of the largest and most prestigious retail conglomerates in Latin America. I stayed with Cencosud S.A. for five years, where I was responsible for banking, insurance, and regulated markets. I was also responsible for leading the corporate law team.

In 2014, I joined the L’Oréal Group as general counsel for Chile, and three years later was given the added role of ethics correspondent for Chile, and data privacy officer for L’Oréal in Chile and Peru. For me, the best thing about being an in-house counsel is that it gives me the platform to combine the excitement of a fast-paced business world with what I’m really passionate about, which is the law. Being able to engage the management team and be a part of the company’s core business, and to view how the company relates to consumers and the market as a result of decisions made based on my own counsel is what ultimately allows me to feel that I made the right career choice.

My team and I are focussed on making the legal department a true business partner. We are changing our approach to technology, while also working collaboratively; we are driven by our passion to shape innovation in the legal industry. To become an important part of a business and to be able to make a difference in society is priceless. It does not make sense to wake up every morning without passion!

Aside from the practice of law, the other thing I am very passionate about is diversity and inclusion, and specifically gender-based issues. I am lucky that L’Oréal is a company that works hard to support these areas. As an active supporter of the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, at L’Oréal we are involved in many initiatives that aim not only to improve the situation of women both in the private and public spheres but also to recognise the contribution of women to the progress of humankind (namely via the L’Oréal Foundation ‘For Women in Science’ programme). This focus on women’s rights is part of our general diversity policy, which also covers non-discrimination on the grounds of disability; marital status or family situation; sexual orientation; age; political and philosophical opinions; religious belief; union activity; and ethnic, social, cultural, or national origin. The work we do with our suppliers and subcontractors is also a key part of our programme to respect human rights, which is why for me, the representation of women within a legal firm is always a key criteria for selecting my panel firm partners.

“In my own experience, motherhood is a great challenge for women to achieve their professional full potential.”

In my own experience, motherhood is a great challenge for women to achieve their professional full potential. Because I am responsible for leading a team, and am therefore in a position to take and advise on organisational decisions, I am a strong advocate for those women who are about to go on maternity leave or are returning to work after being on maternity leave. I believe that it’s important for companies to provide support beyond what the law states, and I also strongly believe that you should be able to rely on other female colleagues to become a support network during this time. As women, it is important to have the right conversations (which are sometimes tough conversations) to set expectations on what we are willing to do and not do; we must help other women to be proud of their work. This is especially important in the Latin America culture, as it is so paternalistic. That I why I feel very proud to work at L’Oréal, a company that aims to empower women on a daily basis through different programmes and initiatives.

Outside of my role at L’Oréal, I am also a member of the LWOW (LawWithoutWalls) community, a part-virtual experiential learning initiative designed for practicing and aspiring lawyers. By leveraging intergenerational, cross-cultural, and multi-disciplinary exchange, the community brings a human-centered design perspective to law. LWOW unites students from more than 35 law and business schools around the world to create innovation at the intersection of law, business, and technology, while developing skills essentials to any modern professional. It focuses on three core areas: upskilling and reskilling; transforming culture and relationships; and creating innovative solutions to real business-of-law challenges.

One thing I have become more convinced about throughout my career is quotas. During my time as a law student and the first years of my career I believed quotas were not needed, because talent would be recognised no matter what. But a couple of years ago, during a talk with Bruce MacEwan, he quoted that ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results’ and it really hit me. Women have been struggling for around 70 years to be respected and included among the leaders of any organisation, and nevertheless the efforts and the women participation rate on boards, governments, etc. – it’s nowhere near equal. We need to start doing things differently. And in my own circle of influence, that is exactly what I am trying to do.

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Andrea Gualde

My journey into an in-house legal role has not been a traditional one. I reached my current leadership position as Director of legal and institutional affairs without having any previous corporate experience. In fact, I had next to no previous experience in the private sector at all!

My career developed almost entirely in the public sector, where I focused on administrative and regulatory law. In 1991, almost exclusively I started working for the Executive National Legal Counsel and Solicitor General’s Office. This was the beginning of a career that lasted more than two decades. My roles over that time encompassed many different responsibilities, but mainly I was leading legal teams at the Ministry of Justice and the Secretariat of Human Rights, where I was the national director of legal affairs. During those years, I worked heavily in the international arena, involving topics as wide-ranging as investment protection treaties and human rights. Despite the diverse nature of those topics, they shared many common aspects: the development of complex strategies; the coordination of interdisciplinary teams for international arbitrations and trials; and human rights legal proceedings and negotiations. I learned from excellent mentors the skills I needed in cases before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and Mercosur.

From a very early stage, I understood that these tasks demanded combining the law’s more technical aspects with wider political analysis and a knowledge of international relations. Thankfully, politics was not absent from my education nor from my calling.

I became a student at the School of Law of Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1985. I was part of the generation that lived during the transition to democracy, which started in 1983 with the election of President Alfonsin and ended seven long years of military dictatorship. This historic circumstance left a deep mark on law students who moved between classes and deliberation forums, thinking about the effects caused to a society whose rule of law had been substituted with terror practices. This was, definitely, the origin of my professional calling on the area of human rights, where I worked for more than 15 years as a public official, and which I continue to support even after leaving government. In fact, I currently head the regional advisory board for Latin America of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation in parallel with my corporate in-house role.

Another very strong influence for me – and one which shaped the way I perceived the law at a very early stage of my career – was the opportunity to continue my academic studies at Yale University as a visiting scholar. Throughout those years, I was exposed to discussions that weren’t yet taking place in Argentina: exciting discussions about feminism, diversity, and multiculturalism. These discussions had a lasting impact on me.

After working as a government official for more than 20 years, another great challenge was put before me: I received the invitation to join an Argentinian private healthcare company to help it strengthen its in-house legal department and to help it tackle important regulatory challenges related to the business’s growth and expansion. (Healthcare is a highly-regulated industry in Argentina.) And so, in 2013, I joined Farmacity to lead its legal department. Not long after I joined, my responsibilities expanded to include leading the area of institutional relations, communication, and sustainability.

“My point of view is that the gender agenda cannot be separated from the history of my generation, nor from my professional training.”

The transition from the public to the private sector was a steep learning curve for me, and involved having to adopt different cultures, languages, practices, and traditions. However, despite working in such a different environment, I realised that the training, principles, and my perspective on justice and the application for the rule of law remained the same and enabled me to adapt quickly to my new situation. I became aware that every position, every role, has been and will always be a continuous learning experience, in which the skills developed and assimilated at one time and for a specific context are adapted and used at other times and in other contexts.

In my corporate life, I find myself applying many of the skills I learned in my years as a government official: the ability to manage and resolve conflict, to lead big teams, to work under pressure, and to make decisions and face the consequences. My experience working within interdisciplinary areas also allowed me to learn vital communication skills: explaining complex legal concepts to non-lawyers, and managing interfaces between political decisions and technical structures. Those same communication skills are used daily in my job as in-house counsel. They are present in the relationships I have with external counsellors for the development of strategies, and during the decision-making process with our shareholders.

As a corporate in-house lawyer, it is important to understand who is responsible for the legal strategy or institutional decision, the scope of the external advisory services, and the way in which the in-house professional provides a unique view of the business’s needs. Also, it is vital to remember the point of view of your shareholders.

The combination of experiences I talk about are not reduced simply to the technical legal skills or qualifications I have gained. It is so much more than that. In this regard, I would like to focus on the human rights agenda – mainly in connection to the gender agenda – and the connection between cultural and societal values and beliefs, and how organisations behave.

My point of view is that the gender agenda cannot be separated from the history of my generation, nor from my professional training. Legal education and professional legal practice for women in Argentina historically reflect the same structural discrimination experienced by other professions and activities, and that women face daily in their lives outside of work as well.

Most students in schools of law in Argentina are women. However, that proportion is transformed in the labour market, where the pyramid is totally inverted. Let us specifically have a look at the proportion of women who are partners at big law firms, or the negligible proportion of women in managerial positions. Let us look at the public sector where most workers within the judicial system are women but only a small number of those women are judges – and those women judges hold office mostly at courts of first instance, seldom at courts of appeals, and where only one woman is among the justices of the Supreme Court. It is worth mentioning that only in 2004 did a woman become part of the highest court in Argentina, and only in 2009 did the School of Law from Universidad de Buenos Aires appoint a woman as dean – for the first time since it was founded in 1821.

Of course, this reality is not unique to the legal industry, not to Argentina. Across the corporate world, most of the top positions in companies are held by men. However, in the legal industry, this vertical segregation is also coupled with horizontal segregation. There are legal areas traditionally performed by women and others by men. The ‘women’s world’ of legal practice has been historically limited to family, labour, and employment law or to those areas considered protective, and related to care. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the world of power, dominated by men: public law, business, and diplomacy. These areas are rarely entrusted to women.

This double layer of gender segregation relies heavily on unconscious biases that support the training, recruitment, and professional development of men at the expense of women. The professional development of a woman lawyer when she graduates is different from that of men. The opportunities to study a major, to study abroad, to publish articles, to become a member of professional boards, and to attend networking activities have historically been more limited for women than for men. This is because the time for professional development often coincides with the time at which women are of reproductive age. If development opportunities occur without any accompanying active policies that allow women to balance their professional lives with their decision to become mothers – and also level caring activities between men and women – this gap will only become wider.

Inequalities and gaps are not fixed on their own. In top in-house positions, as with any other leadership role in any other organisation, corrective measures must be implemented to fix the original inequality. Organisatations should regularly review their selection and promotion processes, they should incorporate gender perspectives into their assessment processes, and they should develop policies to make work and family life compatible.

“All women who have been able to develop a successful professional career have a responsibility to our gender to offer support and guidance.”

For women lawyers in in-house leadership positions, there can be an additional barrier in their way – that legal departments in companies are often support areas, and therefore outside the ‘core’ business areas, which are still very much dominated by men, and seen as men’s responsibility. This segregation is, once again, not only vertical but sometimes horizontal.

Happily, though, a new paradigm is emerging in organisations. The global women’s movement, to which Argentina constitutes no exception, is changing the way in which the gender agenda must be considered by the private sector – almost mandatorily.

Diversity, inclusion, and, in general, human rights, are not only a matter for state or international bodies, but are also starting to become part of companies’ agendas. In 2011, the United Nations issued a document of Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. As a consequence of that universal declaration, the topic is, little by little, moving from the periphery of the private sector’s agenda and advancing towards the center of the business. Companies that embrace diversity and inclusion are committed to broaden the scope of their human rights work; they are moving from traditionally isolated actions that were undertaken under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility, to developing a whole agenda on gender, labour conditions, diversity, and environmental protection for the entire organisation.

This is what we propose to achieve at Farmacity. For more than five years, we have been putting actions in place related to the promotion of equality and the fight against gender-based violence; to educate, prevent, sanction against, and eliminate discrimination and violence against women in any of its forms; and to create alliances with government bodies and organisations from the private sector and civil society to boost the actions carried out together within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In line with our belief that words matter, we made a public declaration that Farmacity is a company with a focus on gender equality.

That said, actions speak louder than words, and so our first concrete action was developing an internal protocol for gender-based violence interventions. We established a procedure that must be followed when violence cases are detected; this includes the provision of special leave for women who are the victims of violence, and arranging assistance with the help of the legal and human resources teams, in a strictly confidential process. In collaboration with specialised institutions, we train all our personnel on gender-based violence: how to detect it and how to provide assistance to the person affected. We also contribute with public campaigns about this serious social problem, which in Argentina causes the death of one woman every 32 hours.

This was then followed by several other initiatives. In collaboration with the National Ministry of Justice, we developed a programme that trains convicted women or women recently released from prison in cosmetics and personal care. This empowers women and also provides job opportunities to an often invisible group of women that faces many different types of discrimination.

We also implemented self-assessment initiatives with the United Nations programme, which enables us to develop a sustainable equality agenda, tackling issues such as women in leadership positions and the reduction of the gender pay gap, amongst many others. These initiatives, along with others that we intend to put in place in the future, result from having an organisational culture that values and promotes an inclusive leadership, and that encourages individuals to be committed to gender equality and women’s rights.

I believe that all women who have been able to develop a successful professional career have a responsibility to our gender to offer support and guidance. The organisational culture that I am committed to promotes and encourages women in such way that they should not have to make any extra effort to demonstrate their value.

From the positions we have, we must contribute to make the road easier for future generations and I believe mentoring constitutes an essential activity within all organisations. For those who are already in senior positions, it is so important to share your experience with those starting their career, to enable an easier road, to reduce gaps, and to eliminate inequalities.

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Alberto Vergara, Head of Litigation, Scotiabank Chile

I would say that our legal team is more advanced than other legal teams because the whole bank is making efforts in the area of technology. There are other financial institutions and other companies in other areas that are behind us – sometimes in a very dramatic way – because they don’t, in their businesses, feel that there is an urgency in making the whole business digital. So, obviously, we have an advantage in that area. We also have an advantage because we are an international company. But, on the other hand, sometimes small companies and new companies have an advantage because they start with digital. For us, we are advanced, but sometimes you have to change the habits of people who have several years in the industry – that they have to now learn how to become digital. That’s a difficult issue. Again, we are better in comparison with a lot of other legal teams, but I would say that smaller companies and start-up companies – their legal teams are probably more advanced than us.

Mainly, we use external providers that develop commercial products for the legal industry in Chile. We have different systems: one in the dispute resolution area called Case Tracking, to review the status of your case in the courts. It’s software that is based on cloud computing technology. That provides you with several functionalities that allow you to track and manage your cases and prepare reports, and so on and so forth. It’s a very friendly software, and it’s available for any company or any lawyer and in other Latin American countries, and it’s been very useful for us.

I would say that the challenge is to increase the use of technology. It’s a growing area and there is a big focus on making the whole bank in the legal area digital. So that’s the goal, and that’s the big challenge but, on the other hand, the problem is that you have to invest a lot of time, a lot of money, and especially education in your internal and external stakeholders. So, it’s very challenging, because the world is urging banks, especially in legal areas, to make a big bet on technology and digital tools but, on the other hand, you don’t have the proper resource to do so. Also, the ‘business as usual’ on a daily basis sometimes makes it harder to make that change. I would say we are trying to increase the time and the money that we are spending on digitalisation, but it is difficult to make a schedule or to develop a very precise and clear plan to do so.

IT is often more focused on the commercial side, so it’s difficult in any business to get attention to the legal area. I would say everyone is very keen on improving their digital relationship with the clients, and let’s say the back office of any business is out of their priorities. So, I would say that IT areas are 90% focused on the digitalisation of the relationship with the clients.

I would say there are three main issues where technology is dramatically changing the legal profession.

In first place, the technology is allowing legal areas to do business with less support staff. Right now, you need so many paralegals or so many assistants, so lawyers are increasingly doing, with the support of technology, tasks that in the past would require non-lawyer assistants. That’s the first dramatic change, because it’s making the legal teams – in some cases – all lawyers, and they don’t need too much support from other areas. That probably will increase in the future, and especially general lawyers will very much do everything by themselves. That’s important.

In second place, I would say that the technology is making it so that the legal profession is losing the human touch in a way that, right now, you can negotiate and close a big deal without meeting the other party in person. That’s a dramatic change, because it allows you to work remotely, even in complex fields. The challenge is that by losing the personal touch, it will hurt the lawyers in their capacity to develop negotiation tactics and so forth. You save cost in matters like travel and meetings, but on the other hand, you will lose some useful tools that only the experience of personal relationships provides to lawyers.

In third place, I would say the big question is: how will AI shape the legal profession? Right now many people are talking about AI, but nobody knows for sure how it will work in the legal profession. That’s an open question, and it may imply that some legal teams will invest a lot of money in AI but at the end it will prove useless. On the other hand, some legal teams will find that AI is useful in some areas: for example, smart contracts. In service industries, in which you have a massive contract that you have to sign every day with clients, artificial intelligence in smart contracts could be a useful tool, but again, probably an open question. There could be an important change regarding managing caseloads and case precedents in order to improve your litigation skills but, so far, I haven’t seen any programme that provides you with an edge without an important expense of money.

The innovation ecosystem in Chile is growing, and I would say there are some forces that have driven that growth. Firstly, Chile has been experiencing an economic growth over the last 30 years, which allows us to buy and develop technology. The Chilean economy is also a very open economy, which allows you to look for external experience and allows you to buy and import any solution off any country, without any problem. Also, since we are an open economy, it also provides you an incentive for Chilean companies to expose themselves to other areas. And lastly, since 2008, the Chilean government has been investing big in improving the tech sector – providing incentives to invest public money in the development of new technologies here, and that has been an important governmental push.

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Carolina Carrasco, General Counsel, Alstom Chile

Our team is looking for new ways of working and new systems to improve legal work. We are looking for new ideas and resources, in order to become more orientated towards implementing artificial intelligence into our work, and this is just the beginning. We recently reviewed new systems that are currently on the market, but before anything can be implemented, in our case, it needs to be validated and implemented by the central offices based in France.

Recently, I was in a regional legal meeting comprised not only of lawyers, but contract management, insurance and compliance people. In this meeting, we spoke a lot about how we are going to manage artificial intelligence and new technologies. Also, how we can manage automatisation in the best way.

For instance, since I work a lot with contracts and negotiations, it would be very good to have a reliable system where I can find worldwide information. Maybe it exists, but I am not aware of it as this is a new issue to deal with for a lawyer of my generation. I am in charge of Chile, but I have also been in charge of other countries which I am not overly knowledgeable about, such as Colombia. In that situation, I have to go to a local legal firm for assistance.

It is difficult for me to research case judgments from different jurisdictions – it would be great to have a system that would make those processes and daily tasks easier. Finding information like this mostly means I have to go to an external lawyer. I do not work in litigation – it is not my area – but sometimes when I am putting together a legal opinion, I need information on judicial cases. At this moment, this information, for a non-litigation lawyer, is not easily found. And this only refers to automatisation and search.

One of the barriers inherent in implementing legal tech comes internally. I know there are certain constraints on my company to implement new systems as there are some systems already implemented at our central level that sometimes don’t fill all the local needs on automatisation or otherwise, which represents security risks.

The circumstances have not obliged me to seek new support systems as it hasn’t been until recently an issue or something that was considered not only a tool but really a resource for optimisation. Obviously, it would be good if external lawyers used more technology. Ultimately, technology could help lawyers deliver solutions within a shorter period amount of time. But still, I believe that the options available to external lawyers, for example to find case law, are the same as the options that are available to me. In the end, we experience the same difficulties. The only difference is that often I do not have the time to do the research myself.

When it comes to legal technology and innovation, I think the legal sector is falling behind other professional sectors in Latin America. Consider that most doctors have artificial intelligence working with them in order to do surgeries, yet these scientific professions are very different to the law. Lawyers tend to be – maybe because of the past – counsellors of the family or of a company. They tend to be more focused on a close relationship with customers than implementing new technology.

The new and upcoming generation is different. My perception is that, in the last five years, new lawyers coming into the market are much more technology- and AI-oriented. They see technology as an asset – something that could be very useful. I think the view of technology and the role it plays within our profession will eventually change, but no one can tell you how quickly the market will allow the process to be implemented, nor the cost of such optimisation.

Looking to the future, I can imagine working with programmes that would speak to you like a robot. Lawyers will have access to a lot of information that will help you make the right decision much faster in the right situation. I know there are some programmes already out there in which you can enter the facts of a case and the programme helps you make a decision regarding a legal issue based on previous decisions. In this case, artificial intelligence will be able to help you make legal decisions quickly. This is happening now. As a result, it means that your workload will be reduced, because part of the work will be done by technology – the software will only be confirming what you have already analysed in a specific situation, or maybe challenge that opinion so you will have new tools to analyse the situation again. I can imagine the future of legal tech looking something like that – and if things were to head in that direction, it would be very interesting. As a consequence, I believe that some legal professionals are starting to fear artificial intelligence, as they believe that it has the potential to replace lawyers.

I do not believe that AI has the potential to disrupt the legal profession. Even if you feed an AI system all of the information, you will still need a lawyer to go through the process of feeding the information into that system. AI may do part of the job as it seems difficult to imagine now AI orienting customers face to face, negotiating, issuing a legal opinion, or litigating in front of a judge. Closeness is an essential part, nowadays, of our job. Times are changing, and we are always working towards becoming more creative and innovative. But, at the end of the day, I see people are still reluctant towards technological change.

Maybe in the future it will be like the movies: everything will be done in a way which is hard to imagine at this moment. At the same time, thirty years ago it was hard for me to imagine speaking on a smartphone. Now I do almost everything on my smartphone.

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Pablo Enrique Urrego Hernández, Head of Legal, Diageo Colombia

Diageo, the global leader in alcohol beverages, with an outstanding collection of over 200 brands enjoyed in more than 180 countries around the world, is a technology- and digitalisation-open company. For human resources, we use a platform on which every employee is able to manage their own information, holidays and professional development. IT and HR have developed a learning platform called ‘Learning Hub’. As I see it, you develop as a professional through being proactive about learning new things, and there is an incredible number of courses, trainings and learnings that you can take on this platform during your Diageo career.

There are many learnings and trainings that our corporate team have developed and uploaded to the platform that are related to legal issues, for example, compliance, or ethics or on specific legal issues. We are also developing local learnings and training, as a complement to global platforms.

In legal, we have been working on a platform for contract management. At the moment it is quite simple: you can upload your contract, control duration of the contract, who is the contractor – it’s a summary of the full contract system that allows you to understand when a contract is going to end, and to do whatever you need in terms of requests and keep control of all documents. You have all the elements that you need in order to take decisions.

However, in Colombia, the idea for the future, if possible, is to apply artificial intelligence to this. We are starting this process by developing models of contracts that the system can match with the requests of our clients. For example, if a brand manager needs a contract for sponsoring an event, the idea is not to go to the lawyer and spend one or two hours trying to explain what they need and so on, but to match the models we are creating with the client’s requirements and let them fill the gaps in those contracts. This means taking some risks, of course. But once they have done that, the system will be able to issue the contract with just one previous reading by a lawyer in order to correct small things. That’s a way of trying to make it much more proactive, much more predictive and much simpler.

If this goes well, the idea is to start applying artificial intelligence not just to get the information, but also to ask questions regarding what kind of contract is needed in order to really fulfil expectations. We are developing that tool by first getting the basics.

We also have a very simple software that we use globally to control our legal processes. It’s not rocket science – you submit information into the software and it organises processes according to risk and the information you have given. But the idea is not simply to stop there: I dream of having a general platform that could connect with law firms. You would give information to the system and obtain information directly from the firms, getting the information in an organised and structured way.

Technology is one of those elements that will change the world, especially in legal. Everybody believes that you need a lawyer for doing contracts and that’s not true. You need a lawyer to do the models and to be critical – what are the minimum factors in a negotiation? But if you have artificial intelligence systems developed to do the contracts according to all of the criteria that the lawyer has given, that will change the way we see contract management.

And what is probable is that in the future, many law firms will have to change their way of working. Today, we rely on their name and reputation; you hire a lawyer because he’s important, he can deal with your problems and can give you the right answers. But in Latin America, jurisprudence and judicial decisions have been very clear in the last ten or 20 years and we have some trends that are already recognised. Of course, every problem is different, but if you recognise those trends, you don’t have to ask lawyers for new concepts, you just have to ask them for probable general concepts that you could apply to your specific problem. This means changing the whole system, their way of working and the way they make profits, and I don’t know if law firms are ready to do that or if they are happy thinking about it. In Latin America, and in Colombia specifically, they haven’t done anything about it, at least nothing we can identify. There are just the typical law firms that have a hierarchical structure of partner, associate, staff and so on. They have the old-fashioned way of working and trying to change that is like trying to break a bargain. They do not care much about innovation and, I have to say, it’s frustrating, because in-house legal teams are far ahead of the legal firms in terms of using technology and using these kinds of tools.

Technology is one of those elements that will change the world, especially in legal.

When it comes to technological disruption in-house, it’s all about the way you construct the culture. It’s not just in the legal team, it’s through the whole company, the whole organisation. I believe the first step is constructing a culture of digitalisation, automation and using technology so that people understand that these are tools that can make life easier and better. They are not competition, they will not replace a lawyer – in my team, every person is important. What I want to be able to do is to free capabilities – give my lawyers freedom to work on other issues. If you have a lawyer spending time doing contracts, that’s not right! You need to liberate, create time for them to do all those things and be able to develop other skills. What technology can do is become a partner in that development – it’s their best ally for that. If people start to understand that technology is a partner and not an enemy or a possible substitute for their job, that will change the progress of what we have been doing.

Being honest, this is not easy at all. You have to be open-minded, you have to be ready to assume some challenges, and you have to be able to unlearn. You have to try to forget some things that you have learnt in order to learn new things that could help you to improve. We need to develop leaders on these issues, and my challenge is to become a leader. I probably won’t be the one that will develop the systems but I could be the one who can push everyone to understand that adopting these kind of systems is a good thing.

You might not be able to find what you want because it’s not yet developed, but you can find someone able to develop it. But in order to find that ally, you have to be really open minded. They need information that might be confidential, or to understand problems that normally you would not talk about outside the company. But once you understand they are an ally and give them trust, everything goes more easily.

I think the legal profession is very far behind other professional service sectors when it comes to technology. I believe no one has taken the time to think about changing the way of working that is normal for lawyers. The lawyer has always been seen as the guy who has all the knowledge to fix problems and people believe that technology won’t be something that lawyers could understand or that would be interesting for them. In some ways they are right, because lawyers are difficult people, especially when you talk about law firms – I am a lawyer, so I can say that! I believe there is a kind of natural restriction in the minds of people, but I believe that could change. It’s about the way we construct culture – and we need to start talking about this much more.

I believe many new and young lawyers are thinking how to change the way law firms and in-house teams are working and, in the medium term – in two or five years – we will see some changes.

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Alejandro Fernández R-B, Head of Legal, Cotemar

I think technology in the in-house department is not an option anymore. Because, as you know, all companies are cost and profit-driven. So, at some point, the question will be on the table: ‘What is cheaper for me’ or ‘What is more efficient for me?’ To have an in-house department, or just to go find a law firm and try to push down the prices? So, I think the technology will give us, as in house lawyers, more possibilities in order to argue that it’s a good idea to have in-house lawyers. I think every company must start to interact with these new technologies to try to develop an idea or a practice to use that. In my case, of course, I’m trying to bring these new technologies and ideas and be open to the market but, otherwise, I try to bring on board young lawyers with these new ideas, who of course can contribute to the development of the legal department.

We deal a lot with in-house software that manages the areas of litigation, arbitration and conflict management. We focus on these areas because of the amount of litigation that we have. For example, in 2009 there was a drop down of oil prices and, as we are a construction and maintenance company, we had to let go of many people because some of our contracts were shut down. That brought us over 100 cases of litigation. So, taking that into account, and also that we have almost 1,200 active suppliers at the moment, we need to find a way to manage this and try to be more strategic.

We have been working in this project almost two years, I believe. At the beginning, there was a lot of data mining. We tried to obtain as much as data as possible from all our contracts and litigation: the value of the litigation, the name of the parties to the contract, the duration of the contract, the purpose, scope and everything else. We did all of this data mining and uploaded it into the software.

At the moment, the software gives me an idea of when, according to the data, is the most proper moment for me to settle. So, this technology gives me all the tools to make a decision and, of course, to manage this big amount of issues.

Before five years, the only contact with technology from our legal department was the cloud and the files’ source. We PDF’d and scanned all the documents and uploaded them, but there was no ‘correct’ way to manage them. In case you wanted to search for a specific file, there was no way to do it. You needed to spend five or ten minutes to find it – if you found it.

The first challenge was to try to obtain budget. It’s not common for in-house – maybe for firms it’s trendier – but for in house, it’s quite new to have this managed software, and it’s newer that you want to create your own software. So, trying to sell the idea to the CEO in order for them to see the benefits that it eventually will bring to the company was really hard. But I can say for sure: today, they can see those benefits and the company is willing to invest more in software within the legal department. Our software was obtained through our in-house IT department, and we spent almost two years working closely between them and our legal department to create this software.

In terms of ethical issues, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this – in Mexico, when you have a labour case, mainly it’s because the former employee feels that he was entitled to receive a bigger compensation. Some cases, they are right; some cases, they are wrong. But that’s purely mathematics. Even if they are right or wrong, my duty as a head of legal is to see the best interests of the company. So, there are some cases that they are right in asking for these extra compensations. But the software might recommend that I can settle with them for a lower figure that they are entitled to. So, that is the ethical issue. Because in some part, I want to, and it’s my duty with the company, and on the other hand of course, I want to be fair with the former employees. So, that is an ethical issue that I am seeing as a result of this software.

Right now, we are planning for next year to add a new part of the software for insurance management, and also for customs management. For customs, we often import the vessels, and our import permit might be valid for six months, seven months, one year or ten years. You have to renew that permit or you will be fined. So, we are thinking to add this part to the software, in order to have a reminder previous to the due date in order for us to renew the permit. Regarding the insurance, it’s the same. We cannot have our vessels or operations without insurance, so the idea is to create these new parts of the software to manage that.

Both external lawyers and in-house teams have to adapt to new processes. But, at some point, we ask for external lawyers to fit our software: we ask them to do it, but we understand that we are not their only client. So it takes time for them to fit the software, and if the software is not with the proper data, we cannot take the proper decision. So it can be difficult – it’s gymnastics. At some point, we have to work on that, and eventually it will be really natural.

Historically, lawyers are not used to using technology in our profession, and the definition of a lawyer has been to do things the old-fashioned way – with paper, or e-mail. Before we took the decision to develop the software in house, we looked at many options within the market, and we noticed that most of the software was being developed in order to manage, first of all, the billing hours for external lawyers and, secondly, to manage contract drafting – and that’s it.

New generations of young lawyers have a different set-up, a different mindset. I think lawyering is a little bit behind if you compare it with other professions, such as marketing. I think these new generations will push harder to improve new technologies in the law practice.

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Rafael Dantas, General Counsel and Director – Legal and Compliance Latin America, General Mills

After more than a decade focused on the chemical and pharmaceutical business while working for Bayer, formerly as a tax lawyer and overseeing all the legal areas over the years, I have recently decided to take on an opportunity that has changed my daily routine by moving to General Mills to be part of a great team, working now in the food business. I am now responsible for providing the direction for all legal and compliance matters across our company’s businesses in Latin America. In order to do that, I have a team of six people within the region, and we are now deeply discussing, testing and making a lot of use of technology at General Mills. We are still evaluating tools for litigation – and with my previous experience as head of litigation at Bayer, for me, it is something the company can really make benefit of by having the right data and cost control while using this kind of technology. Nowadays, there is no way you can manage a legal department without making use of technology – and this is for contract, litigation and billing purposes – there is no way you can stay out of it. I am a big believer in technology, and I always try to foster this new technology right at its foundation. So as a business, we are, right now, testing and always looking for new technology, and hopefully we will get it implemented.

In the last three years, the legal sector has offered more in terms of developing technology, and is making real progress. Before that happened, I would say that it was a little behind. I think the legal market is going to keep up this technological momentum, but when compared to other markets, such as finance, we are still behind. I am a big believer that technology helps to streamline and illuminate company overheads. Legal professionals should take technology as part of their job: there is no way you can work in legal [or any other area] without taking technology as part of your job. It will become more and more relevant. You cannot stay away. You have to be prepared. There is no way you can manage a legal department without making use of technology.

For contract management, the use of technology has been helping companies here in Latin America a lot. We have an in-house system for contact management where you can easily pull out a predetermined contract, which dramatically reduces your overhead of in-house lawyers working on standard contracts. This is very helpful in terms of budgeting and overhead production. You are also able to control the workflow within the company: from the start of the contract, when the business unit is negotiating the contract, to the signing of this contact – which goes electronically and by hand. We are also implementing digital signatures for contracts.

For litigation, there has been a lot of upgrading within the systems available in the market – software companies are designing litigation tools: it works both in case management, and in billing. Therefore, you can manage the case and also have your external information managed within the system. This is helpful in both reducing your overhead externally and controlling your case. In the past, companies were used to receiving reports by copying and pasting information into a system. But now we are finding that external law firms are inputting every piece of information on the case, rather than having in-house counsel do this. This technology is making the work of in-house counsel easier.

For budgeting purposes, there has been an evolution in our work because we can now predict cases. You can build your budget on the actual number of cases you have ongoing. You are also able to control the hourly case rate on a case-by-case basis. This brings about more security and predictability on the existing provisions you may have.

I have been implementing new technology within my legal team for a while. It has been more than 12 or 13 years since I began upgrading systems and providing new technology to my team. Like I said, I am a big believer in technology. However, there are two big challenges you face when implementing new technology.

Firstly, the in-house team must be ready to make the change – it demands a lot of work, especially in terms of preparing for change. This requires a lot of work in standardising the documents and the archives for a new system first. You must make sure you are communicating the benefits of such technology to your team, in order to get everyone involved and committed to the project. This is a major internal challenge that you and your in-house team may face.

For budgeting purposes, there has been an evolution in our work because we can now predict cases.

The second challenge concerns external counsel: when you are outsourcing your services to a large number of outside counsels, it is natural that each and every law firm uses their own system and has their own routine. It is difficult to make sure that the external company is using your system or actually providing the information that your company requires. So, when looking into systems, or any new technology, it’s always highly recommended to integrate as much as possible the targeted solution with the existing technology available so no disruption is caused to your routine.

In my view, AI is going to disrupt the legal profession. In the past, people used to instruct lawyers for basic and simple cases. We had to answer the phone multiple times a day to address standard topics and answer these questions. But now, people are able to interact with a machine where their questions are answered and standard contracts are drafted, which saves companies a lot in terms of in-house counsel overhead needs. I think this is something that is already a reality and it will change dramatically the way we interact with our business. AI is our reality if we wish to develop a more standard and simplified way of building documents and contracts for legal work. This is already a reality and something that I would be happy to have the chance to be implementing within the next five years.

Will I lose my job to a computer in the future? This is a question that all lawyers are asking themselves. But, when it comes to views and interpretation of all nuances concerning either contracts or litigation, I still believe a machine will not be able to do this work. A human will always be required to do the job. Although, I do think for less complex things like mass litigation and standard contracts, I have no doubt that these are going to be performed by machines and may pose a threat to people currently performing these jobs. But, for high profile and specific cases, I still firmly believe there is no way a machine will be able to perform these in the same way a human can.

I think there is one topic regarding the use of technology of which I am a little sceptical and that is the predictive ability of software. By the time we receive a new lawsuit, there might be a high chance that the software will say that we are losing the case based on the current position of the court or the current position of the work in your country. The big challenge yet to be overcome is, again, the nuances of a number of court decisions we have and the way a machine interprets and provides its provision. There are a number of cases still decided and won by means of small details and it might be challenging for a machine to process such information in the same way that humans are able to. So, this is one area regarding the use of technology that I view as there still being more proof required.

So overall, I am fully supportive, and I feel the majority of the technology available has been fully proven. I am a big believer that they have come to help and streamline and eliminate the overhead.

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Selim Erdil Guvener, General Counsel, International Potato Center (CIP)

CIP is a research organisation conducting agricultural research for development in 22 countries, mainly in the global South – this means we are very much involved with the development of intellectual property. Sustainability in agriculture is a key priority for our organisation. We have reached six million households in sub-Saharan Africa with our sweet potato technologies: we distribute genetic resources so other entities can use them in developing new solutions.

We are very much a capitaliser of technological innovation in terms of agriculture. That is exactly how I see our legal department. We are a service-oriented group of lawyers using technology to support colleagues around the world to be aware of the regulatory elements that they need to be taking into consideration for the implementation of their projects. This is so they can plan, and so that nothing becomes a bottleneck. We organise our portfolio management through a system called OCS – it’s based on ‘Agresso’. This is where we try to automate as much as possible: in terms of creating reports, creating networks for contractual management, and timesheets. An important aspect of our work is supporting the innovation pipeline. We have contracted an external software service provider for management of our IP platform, which covers all IP management processes, from invention disclosure all the way up to licensing. As soon as our colleagues have a brilliant idea, we encourage them to disclose it internally. This triggers a review process, supported by both our legal and finance teams. Then, with approval from assigned leadership, we take all necessary protections, such as intellectual property rights. With our integrated corporate system, we can monitor how we use that technology with different development projects or whether we license it for others to use. We can measure the impact whilst we’re deploying the invention for public benefit. Email almost becomes a burden when you come to the end, with a long exchange of documents from lots of different members of the chain. We work in a decentralised way, so collaborating with Microsoft Teams has been tremendously helpful – it’s fantastic when you’re working across multiple time zones with different people.

We are now a lot closer to our clients thanks to technology. Not only from a telecommunications and technology point of view, but also because we’re able to follow their work and provide support almost instantly.

Now that we have significant information technology support, we can understand what the client’s business actually is.

Let me give you an example: we have a monitoring and evaluation platform where we gather all the information – this is not necessarily legal information. But, we do have the key performance indicators in there. We can look at it and identify the key challenges colleagues are facing. We can see if there is anything related to legal challenges. Therefore, we can pre-empt project implementation challenges before they become real bottlenecks for projects. The ability to work on legal documents in real time is a really big change.

The main challenges we’re experiencing within the legal team concern confidentiality and data security. Now this comes with multiple aspects: it’s not necessarily something the legal department can resolve. We also work in connectivity: we have everything on the cloud, so colleagues are able to operate them when they’re in the field. But, we do have countries and projects where internet connectivity is an issue. In those cases, having world-class technological tools available to us can actually be time-consuming and frustrating. We’ve been looking at how much can we do by teleconferencing rather than travelling, allowing us to have as much face-to-face interaction as possible – without having to travel across the world and contribute to global warming. On one hand, technology is developing significantly, but on the other, there are still parts of the continent that are lagging behind.

For in-house teams, the most important benefit of technology is being able to communicate in real time: shortening the communication time between offices, therefore being able to explain very quickly and provide support from a legal perspective. The legal profession is very much based on the knowledge of the lawyers and the ability to understand the situation at hand: I believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) is particularly useful for in-house teams. The more we can rely on AI, the more we can open up bottlenecks. So, for a small legal department working in multiple jurisdictions, the big challenges are knowledge of local laws and regulations and the language barrier. With local laws and regulations, you can do your research or contract outside counsel. But, with the language barrier, it is more difficult. For example, if you want to work with China, you need both a translator and a lawyer who speaks Chinese. Working with 22 different countries, this has become a bigger challenge. Therefore, AI, in terms of translating written communications, is extremely useful to us today.

With AI, it will be particularly beneficial in streamlining processes for legal teams in the future. I see AI as a continuation and an extension of computing power. We no longer have typewriting, we’re collaborating online via real-time documents – this allows us to work more efficiently. We also see this through Siri and Cortana – they act as a personal assistant, they send an email which causes someone to respond to your queries. If we go from this to ‘hey I am setting up your goals because you have these objectives,’ that would increase the productivity of our legal team. There’s an administrative side. I think we, as lawyers, need to manage AI and it is very dependent on the capabilities of the lawyer. The judgement and understanding of the business that a lawyer has is very difficult to replace with AI, it might be difficult for AI to provide adaptable solutions. I think, for the next ten years, we still need a lawyer to support AI – rather than AI taking over the role of lawyer.

With new technology, new ethical issues are also raised: information is sensitive because it can be personal information, research data and research projects. We want to make sure that our assistance provides efficient protection, but we are constantly challenged by people who want to access our information without proper authorisation. The more digital we become in our work, the more difficult it is to establish network safety and security. So, at the same time, we need to educate the people who are using and accessing our network in order to protect it. This will require training and capacity building for our workforce.

I moved to Latin America six years ago. Previously, I was working in London, Istanbul, Nairobi and Benin. I think the legal profession in Peru is behind the US and Western Europe in terms of adopting new technology. Here, I can still only see technology use at the word processing and some systems levels. But lawyers will need to adapt quickly, as digital transformation is picking up speed, especially in the government.

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Alejandra Castro and Catalina Morales, Bayer, Costa Rica

GC: Can you tell me about how you use technology in the Bayer legal team in Costa Rica?

Alejandra Castro (AC): The legal headquarters in Germany have organised a worldwide structure in the legal department. We might be a unique global legal department where all our strategies are aligned including the vision on technology that should lead our functions. We centralise in a single IT tool the contracts, compliance cases, and data privacy processes, in addition to the monitoring of regulations in the region, plus patents as well.

As legal departments in Bayer, we handle various databases, and we are currently migrating to a new IT tool handled by regional expert teams, to make sure that everyone uses the same templates for contracts, with the same quality of service and the same regulations. The tool allows being a self-service contract database for contracts that we have already drafted, which will be harmonised for all the legal entities that we have. There will be an ability to make an online request for different templates outside those already drafted, and then these requests for new contracts will done by the legal department. Our expectation – and we are already reviewing this and finding this is what is happening now – is that the workload is getting lowered. We are trying to use these tools in order to make the process more agile, and to speed up all of the negotiations that we have with external vendors and so on.

Catalina Morales (CM): This new tool grants a contract life cycle management system. This means that you can find a template, you can send it to your business partner in legal, you can send it to your provider from the platform, the provider can give any feedback in the platform as well and, if they have the digital signature, they can also sign it online, and then you just store it in the same system. The idea is to use this system for contracts from the beginning.

AC: On the IP side, we have a different tool – it’s the same IT platform, but it’s a different tool where we upload all the patents that we have. It helps us by reminding us, for example, about deadlines and other IP risks that are very important with patents. If you miss a deadline, you can lose your patent, so for us it’s very important to keep a record of the timeline. In the past, patents were handled through local law firms and they were the ones that kept the reminders on the deadlines and the stages of the patent process. Now that we have developed our own patent tools, we do all the surveillance and the follow-up of what the law firms are doing, so it has increased our work in a positive way.

CM: On the compliance side, the tool registers every event or every investigation that we have. All compliance officers in each country or region have to input everything – every advance that has been happening in the case or the investigation. It is a tool where we are recording, but also reporting to global headquarters. It helps to visualise the impact compliance is having and guide future decision-making, such as whether we need to reinforce training or do more work on specific topics in a specific area or country. It is also useful to use as a knowledge system – you can visualise and it even helps you show that, for example, the number of investigations has gone down since you’ve trained, since you’ve provided more information. You can see, actually in a tangible way, the results of your compliance work.

GC: Have there been any particular challenges that you’ve encountered as you’ve been developing these IT platforms?

AC: Yes, there have. The first challenge was to make sure that we have a single template and that we keep the template with the most protection for the company, no matter in which jurisdiction the contract would be enforced. In my region, there are 33 countries in which we have legal operations, all of whom have different regulations, so that was challenging.

The second challenge was that, in the past, each region had developed their own IT tool for contracts. Now that we are migrating to the new tool – which is the single tool that will be used by everyone – it creates an additional challenge for areas or regions that need to leave the tools that were already developed, and migrate to this too.

CM: There’s always going to be challenges with what is a culture change. You need to explain that you’re not going to do this anymore, the way you’ve been doing it for the last 10 years – now you have to do it this way. Obviously, that is going to take time to adjust. There’s always going to be that initial scepticism about the new system – is it really going to work, do we have to do all this change if it won’t work in two or three years? We do have to do a lot of convincing, a lot of explaining why actually the system works and how it is going to benefit you. That’s the key: I think once they see the benefits, they get on board.

GC: Legal is one area where Bayer is implementing artificial intelligence. How are you currently using it and how do you think that use that will evolve from the sorts of things people are currently using it for?

AC: We currently have experience using AI in labour calculations, for example, for severance payments. It has already brought a lot of value to the department and it is just the beginning. I believe that, in contracts for example, we are going to see a lot more development around how artificial intelligence can help us work on our daily tasks.

CM: I think that AI could have an impact on the profession and the positions required in a legal department. A physical lawyer will always be needed, but the amount of lawyers needed in one department may decrease. For the company, or for the law firm, you could say that’s better because you need fewer people to do the same amount of work, but on the human side, as a lawyer, I wouldn’t like to lose my job and be replaced by technology! We need to find a common ground for us to work together.

I believe we will continue to see a rise in automation, too. It’s inevitable. I don’t know if it will change drastically and I don’t how fast it will change, but it will definitely change. The important thing is to have a company that supports this innovation and digitalisation, because it’s going to affect not only legal but every single department in the company. The engagement of the employees is going to be 100% necessary.

GC: How do you think the legal sector compares to other professional service sectors in Latin America when it comes to technology, innovation and working digitally?

AC: I think that lawyers believe they are not comparable. This is why we have sometimes not implemented technology. But I do think that our services are totally comparable to other areas that have already implemented these tools, like in accounting and finance teams. We are able and we can implement those tools – and there is no need to be afraid of that. I remember when we implemented digital signatures for several legal procedures, there was a lot of resistance from lawyers in the region, but now we use it on a regular basis and digital signatures are part of what we implement in contracts and data procedures. I think there are a lot of things that we can do and I think that legal departments are more than prepared to undertake this.

GC: How would you like to see law firms using and adapting to technology?

AC: If I request external counsel advice for legal opinions, I would love to have law firms keep a record of what they have answered to us for corporate housekeeping, to make sure that they have IT tools to give reminders on processes that are done on a yearly basis, like renewal of the corporation or payment of taxes. But it’s hard to find that in the market. At least, in my country group, we don’t have it. I know that I have peers in other country groups where they do have that service, but not in Central America.

‘The law firms that I work with use very little technology in order to provide their services.’

We are undertaking evaluations on outside law firms focused on the technology that they are implementing, so that we can look to use that as well. But, at least in the region where we have our legal department, I don’t think that there is too much going on yet. The law firms that I work with use very little technology in order to provide their services. However, from a global perspective, I know that headquarters have analysed global law firms that are using technology, so we have been able to review those technologies to see if we can apply them in our region or to our IT platforms.

GC: How can in-house teams best prepare and equip themselves for technological changes and disruption in future?

AC: There is a lot of work that has to be done from an investment and budget perspective. I think that is the first challenge that we need to face. The second is training; we’re used to having legal training, but now I think it’s very important to have specific training on the new IT tools that we are implementing, in order to be part of this new era where technology will be leading the legal department.

CM: As a legal department or a law firm that is not yet very technologically advanced, I would definitely recommend doing due diligence. Start small – start mapping out what systems can make your life easier. Maybe just a repository for a list of contracts, so you can upload a template, so that the whole law firm has a basic template that can be shared within a general system – that way, anyone that needs that type of contract can use it and the organisation has one face towards the client. Because, as a client, maybe one lawyer did the same type of contract differently than another lawyer, then you’re giving me two different versions, and maybe in one we went to labour litigation and with the other one we didn’t. So, at the end, it’s easier because they would have the same standard within.

I’m talking just basic contracts, but it works with other things, like legal opinions. If you’re going to give your client a legal opinion, you need to keep a record of what you said to the company and you can also start showing the benefits of having that to the managerial department, to see the importance of having that IT technology within the company.

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Patricia Ulian, General Counsel, Archer Daniels Midland, Brazil

I joined ADM a year and a half ago, and in the past year we’ve invested a lot in technology. I myself am a person that really thinks that technology is important, because you really can replace operational work that I think is not a priority for senior lawyers – I try to prioritise the strategic issues and benchmarking, in order to check the other companies and really understand what we have in the market. I try to improve and, if this is the case, we invest externally.

ADM Brazil invests a lot in technology, we’re upfront: we know what works and what doesn’t. When we see something working, we can adopt that solution to what we also do in the future. But, in order to do this, we need to gather the necessary data to take such decisions. And, looking at information necessary to take those decisions, law firms are able to provide information in a better way and in a better form – things like graphics – and some law firms are able to provide us this information, so that we don’t need to do the work, which I consider to be operational, to get this information ourselves. And, it’s on information like that we can take decisions. That’s the point.

It’s never easy to get budget. It’s super difficult: you have to put a business case forward and prove why you need to bring that technology to the company, and make some sort of trade-off – this need not be in monetary terms, it could be efficiency. You need to show how valuable the technology is that you’re investing in. If you’re a big, global company you also need to prove that this technology is in accordance with the entire IT project globally. Not just in terms of local security – because what you are doing on a local level can interfere in security – but, you need to understand that everybody has to approve. Being practical in this way can bring a lot in for the company.

At ADM, we have control technology which allows us to control the litigation cases. The technology we use was acquired in the market but specifically customised to our needs. We have a massive litigation area here, so that technology helps us get the information we need. I wouldn’t call it artificial intelligence because it’s not done alone, but it does allow us to use that information gathered for practice or for analysis. With this, we can see how many cases we’re winning, how many we’ve lost, how much money we’re going to lose and how many cases we’ve received. For example, if we focus on labour pay and want to see why we have so many of these labour cases, you can detect that through our technology, and then this allows legal to brief and train the business to be aware of the current legislation and to be able to reduce these problems in the future. We can do this in relation to any problem. If we see that our consumers have a specific problem in a particular region, then we can make sure we avoid the same problem in the future. It’s a useful strategy to have in legal.

Brazil is very advanced in terms of technology and has very sophisticated solutions concerning IT because of all the investment here. Being a super big and democratic nation, we have a lot of legal work and technology here. But, Latin America consists of many nations. For example, you’ve got both Mexico and Bolivia – these are two totally different countries with different levels of development. When you think of Mexico, there are many differences in culture, and you must also consider the dependency on the US. You also have Brazil, which speaks Portuguese, whilst all other Latin American nations speak Spanish. You have many differences, but Brazil is a pioneer in this area compared to other Latin American countries.

I think that AI is revolutionary for in-house teams. I think that AI, or something related to AI, will create more connections than ever. I think the future is about AI and connection, because as much as we can be connected now, we cannot connect things and people – AI helps with this. When you can make out as many links as you can between people and information – for example, you can now make a complete profile on and of anyone. Before I meet someone, I can go into a web link, see their profile and other information about them – everything – even their personal life: whether they’re married, have kids, where they live and what they like and dislike. This is powerful because I can have a conversation with them and convince them of something, because, essentially, I know them now. Giving a simple example, if you have LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram, I now know you. So I will know how to process our conversation in a way that I can convince you of something. We can see this when purchasing items on Amazon: when you buy a product, Amazon offers you other related products. This is embryonic and I think the future will be more like that. The more connected we are with information, the more connected we are with people.

AI and technology will not replace lawyers, but it will replace lawyers who don’t use technology. By nature, I think technology and information will become more global. So, I think privacy will become a big problem because everyone will know everything about you, and you won’t be able to have a little bit of privacy. Most of the available information is free right now, because it’s so easy to get this information. What was valuable in the past is not valuable in the future – like information. In the future, you need to be more strategic and use that to your advantage. I think the future is about AI and connecting us to as much information as possible.