Team size: Eight

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

In Chile, the year 2022 was a tremendously challenging year from a constitutional perspective, since the approval of a constitutional text was being discussed, which could have a direct impact on the field of human resources. An example of the above were proposals that restricted the outsourcing, as occurred in Mexico and Peru. In this sense, the legal department has been very close to the main lines of business, moving from a traditional back-office role to a front office role, either as revenue generator or revenue keeper.

Why are in-house lawyers well-placed to drive change in their organisations?

The in-house legal departments have been migrating from the traditional prosecutorial role, which, as its name indicates, supervises the business without being inside it, to an advisory role with a direct impact on the business. They are expected not only to take care of revenue, but also to generate it by anticipating changes that may have a negative or positive impact on the business, lobbying appropriately with public authorities, being close to clients for an excellent contractual architecture, streamlining the processes of contract closing and in general, being a strategic partner of the financial, commercial and general management areas. Today, all decisions will be better taken if you have an understanding of the edges of a problem, and in that, legal has a lot to say. This is a big difference with external legal advice, since the in-house lawyer fully understands the business and can react and anticipate with agility.

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

The first thing which is crucial to building strong relationships with business partners is to understand the needs of internal clients. There is no better way to solve a problem than by putting yourself in the other’s shoes. Second, clear SLAs must be generated about what our internal client can expect in relation to deadlines. Normally the internal client will have the urgency that the external client demands, and many times it is due to lack of clarity about the deadlines to expect. Thirdly, today it is a duty of legal departments to use technology that allows viewing the review status of a document, and for this there are many useful platforms that allow both legal and the rest of the company’s departments, to have access to the information, in such a way that harmony and total clarity are generated in the processes carried out by legal. In this way, an excellent delivery of the service is ensured, because at the end of the day it all comes down to that, to provide an excellent service, seen from the perspective of the customer.