About

In June 2017 Michelle Beckers joined marketing execution company InnerWorkings in a pan-geographic counsel role, providing legal support to the company’s non-US operations with a special focus on Latin America. She had previously served a similar role as vice president and assistant general counsel for global operations at Rimini Street, a leading provider of independent enterprise software maintenance and support services. At Rimini Street, Beckers was similarly responsible for all non-US legal affairs and led a team of five lawyers – one of whom was based in São Paolo, Brazil – covering global legal operations. In her new role at InnerWorkings, Beckers will take on work that had previously been completed by outside counsel. The opportunity to step into a role with an even greater focus on Latin America appealed to Beckers, who as a student spent a year in Venezuela toward her JD and has also worked at a Peru-based law firm. ‘The fact that I understand the relationship between civil and common law is very useful when it comes to advising on Latin America-based matters’, she says, ‘but knowing how business works is even more important. Things tend to move slower and the advice you get from law firms is often theoretical and needs to be filtered much more by the GC before it reaches business to make it clear how it applies to a course of action. However, it is a fascinating market precisely because it’s so difficult to deal with from a commercial and legal perspective. The number of jurisdictions and applicable law alone is at times overwhelming and if a business has a strategic plan to grow or establish a new entity it needs close support from internal lawyers’.