What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Eve Holding is an American public company listed at NYSE with two subsidiaries, one in USA and one in Brazil, dedicated to accelerating the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) ecosystem. Benefitting from a startup mindset, backed by Embraer’s more than 50-year history of aerospace expertise, and with a singular focus, Eve is taking a holistic approach to progressing the UAM ecosystem, with an advanced eVTOL project, a comprehensive global services and support network and a unique air traffic management solution.

I have four departments of my responsibility, legal, proposals, compliance and procurement, with six people reporting to me. The most significant legal involvement of my team recently was the SPAC transaction between Eve and Zanite Acquisition. In addition, since Eve is a listed company, there is a huge corporate governance work inside it to comply with SEC rules and Delaware corporate laws. The legal department supports all internal areas such as sales, program, engineering, HR, finance, among others. All areas of law are handled by Eve’s legal department, including new regulatory matters related to ANAC, FAA and EASA new regulations of the UAM market.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

It is very important to trust your external law firms and that they are aligned with the company’s business, its values and pace, to give innovative and appropriate advice. The more the in-house lawyer trusts the external law firm, the more efficient and beneficial the relationship between them is. This can save time and capital for the company and can cause external law firms to provide more precise, practical and consistent consulting services to the company.

As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

In-house lawyers will need to be more agile, bold, and active to help businesses that are, each day, more challenging and creative. In-house lawyers need to understand the business, feel part of the team and be more creative and risk takers. Of course, always complying with applicable rules and regulations.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

In-house counsel need to be business-oriented and work closely together with business partners to enable the business to be in a proactive and compliant manner. In-house lawyers need to understand the business and always be open to help business partners, providing out of the box solutions.