About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department?

Managing director and senior legal advisor Márcio Bonfiglioli has taken on a new position as senior legal advisor for J.P. Morgan’s Brazilian franchise, from a previous role as head of the Brazil legal department.

The team is deemed as trusted advisors by internal clients, supporting the different lines of business to achieve their goals, while maintaining proper controls and counterbalances. It is a diverse team, engaged in J.P. Morgan’s efforts of diversity and inclusion, and actively participating as leaders and allies in all of the internal groups created by employees for the advancement of women and minorities in the workplace.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years?

The legal department in Brazil works closely with all lines of business and, therefore, is involved in all relevant cases and transactions related to J.P. Morgan in Brazil.

How important have ‘soft skills’ or personal attributes outside of technical legal skill been to the team’s success, and which ‘soft skills’ do you feel are most important for an in-house lawyer to possess?

The world is constantly changing, and the financial industry is no exception. In my view, the challenges to in-house legal teams are likely to centre on finding creative solutions to any issues the company might encounter. The personal attributes we, as corporate lawyers, need to have are to be creative, innovative, collaborative, versatile, problem solvers and to leverage technology, while always looking for a better client experience, be it internal or external. Moreover, I think we should develop non-traditional skills and competencies, like project and risk management, process improvement and simplification, and business collaboration, to go beyond just knowing and advising on the law.

Does the team use any ‘legal tech’ products and do you find them a helpful management device?

The legal department in Brazil makes use of internal systems to manage its activities and deliver its services. For instance, COiN (short for Contract Intelligence), is a machine-learning tool that saves hundreds of thousands of hours of work. Each year the firm executes tens of thousands of new contracts, and they vary in length from 5-200 pages. Today the firm manually reviews contracts to find relevant information such as value, pricing, ratios and dates. But thanks to COiN, a patent-pending new tool by the intelligent solutions machine learning team, this information can be extracted in just seconds.

Is diversity and inclusion as a matter of internal policy on the agenda at your company? How much influence do you, as an in-house legal team, have on the diversity and inclusions policies of your organisation?

The firm’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is unwavering and is a global effort. Creating and maintaining an inclusive environment where all employees can bring their authentic selves to work each day is at the core of our culture of respect. We have a diverse team with employees actively engaged in J.P. Morgan’s internal groups created to improve the career progression of colleagues affected by mental or physical disabilities, potentially subjective to gender, race and ethnic discrimination or even helping the youngest and junior generation. We have also promoted events to address the message that this is the approach we expect from our external advisors and vendors, especially law firms. To track this, we also send out specific questionnaires to these advisors and vendors.

Focus on…

Additional Skills

My thought piece is centred in the additional skills that an in-house lawyer should have, considering this fast changing environment the societies where we live in and corporations we work at are facing. The personal attributes us, as corporate lawyers, need to have, are, in my view: to be creative, innovative, collaborative, versatile, problem solvers and to leverage technology, while always looking for a better client experience, be it internal or external. As I have said, I think we should look to develop non-traditional skills and competencies, like project and risk management, process improvement and simplification, and business collaboration, to go beyond just knowing and advising on the law.