Focus on connecting the legal team with the strategy

A paramount pillar for the success of a legal team is to be part of an organisation’s strategy, setting legal objectives around the company’s long-term vision, actively collaborating as a relevant player.

Legal teams are constantly challenged to expand their horizons, to be creative, to think beyond the conventional, and be a real strategic business partner to the company. This is becoming more critical considering the collective turning point in our climate, resources, regulations, and communities.

To achieve this goal and become a critical stakeholder in the key decisions of the organization, legal teams must always know the business sector, markets, countries, and company challenges, as without that experience and ability to connect legal and risk management expertise, legal teams will not be able to succeed. Failure to properly understand their business would mean that in-house lawyers will remain only as contract review experts, and in some cases, they will be a roadblock to the business.

The general counsel should not only know the company’s strategy, but it should also live it, and connect it to its legal team and hence to their legal strategy. In our case, general counsel leads a large team based in different countries, cities, and cultures like Latin America and Caribbean.

General counsel should always ensure the legal team across the organisation profoundly comprehend the strategy and its team is embedded into the business. This goal requires: i) setting reasonable and fit for purposes procedures and policies, avoiding processes that do not create value to the organization. It is not about cutting corners, is about the appropriate controls and mitigations in place; ii) building an inclusive, integrated, proactive, agile, and scalable legal team, aiming to provide seamless support and advise to the business at all levels, driving leading performance and efficiency by further leveraging the scale of the company; and iii) Properly communicating to the organization, especially to the C-level, the value of the procedures and policies being implemented and how this support the business and manage our risk tolerance and appetite.

It is not just about claims and contracts, new regulations, enterprise risk management, risk committees, crisis management or leading together with management and the Ethics and Compliance teams our comprehensive integrity programme. It is about being a critical asset to the business and part of the present and future success of the company.