About

Headquartered in New York, non-profit development organisation Pro Mujer International has offices in five Latin American countries: Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Nicaragua. The global legal team is set up as a centre of excellence, providing high quality services to internal clients of the organisation in all countries. General counsel Cesar Maita joined Pro Mujer in 2016 with the objective to redesign and build the legal department. He has since created a strong hub of excellence with team members spread in the field in Latin America, reporting directly to him, with a combined geographical and specialisation-based distribution of tasks, resulting in a more streamlined and effective legal department. 2016 was significant in redefining the legal team as both in-house counsels were replaced by two regional legal managers, one for Mexico and Central America and the other for Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. ‘From then up to now we have been building up the legal to nine in-house counsels and an intern’, says Maita. Since then, the legal team has worked on strengthening the organisational structure, composition and management of the legal departments’ continuous work. ‘Last November we held our first retreat which worked to develop the mission, vision of the department, clarify the legal strategy and analyse strengths, weaknesses and agreed in concrete measures on how to perform better as a team’, explains Maita. This has been evident in the figures which show a rate of 70% internal client satisfaction of overall services provided by the legal department in all countries achieved in 2018. ‘We aim to be at 80% in 2019’, says Maita who has recently achieved a Yellow Belt Certification in Legal Lean Sigma and Project Management, further helping him lead the department towards such a goal. 2019 will be a year of consolidation for the department, with aims to improve the level of effectiveness and efficiency in the provision of legal services.