What are the most significant cases and transactions that you have recently been involved in?  

My role as general counsel of one of the largest service contractors of the country means that I have the honor and duty of working on policies, contracts and cases that touch the lives of more than 15,000 people all over the Philippines. My work is heavy on corporate labour and employment practice in an industry misunderstood by the public and stigmatised by labor activists. We have been confused even by former governments, as perpetrators of contractualisation and “endo” (a means of circumventing workers’ rights to security of tenure in their employment). 

While my work does not involve fabulous transactions like mergers or investments in significant infrastructure or financing projects, we regularly bid for and manage contracts that help in the operation and maintenance of our airports and ports and help our government agencies deliver essential government services to the public. This is where I believe my work gives me the chance to make a positive social impact. My everyday work involves ensuring that we stay true to our contractual obligations while keeping our client contacts satisfied in the delivery of services and performance of our employees; we strike a delicate balance between client’s demands, the interest of the company and the protection of workers’ rights on issues of replacement, discipline, enforcement of liability and recovery of damages, my corporation is represented effectively in cases, and even ensuring that our employees’ rights are represented, up to the extent of representing them in requesting for assistance from government for favorable action on their benefits as employees serving the government. 

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?  

Last year I used free functions of google forms, google drive, google sheets in improving my department’s services in the following manner.  

Using Google forms, we created request portals for review of contracts and employee notices which ensured that the requesting party identified the client, date needed and attached all the necessary references for the review of these documents. By using google forms, we can ensure that the requesting party provides all the required information and supporting documents. This eliminates the need of checking attachments and responding with a request for missing documents or information when using e-mail in the requests for review. This also acts as a ticketing system because it records all requests in the order they are submitted. 

The google forms responses are linked to google sheets, which may be accessed by team members and requesting parties, while maintaining the confidentiality of the documents because access to the documents for review and reference documents is limited to reviewing lawyers until access is granted to the requesting party after review is completed. 

We add columns on the sheets file for the update on the status of the requests, the date they are finished, the number of processing days and the link to the finished reviewed document. This means that when the requesting party accesses the google sheets, they can see and track how many other requests we are handling before their requests. The google sheets not only eliminates the need for the requesting parties to e-mail us for updates, it gives them the update on the status, pending queue and even data on our average processing time. 

This year, we used LinkTree to compile the links to the forms and sheets into an easy to access QR code for our service portals. We have also included a link to a google document showing our team members contact numbers and the scope of their tasks so that our internal clients know whom to approach regarding specific concerns. This gives our internal clients easy access to all our links, without the need to search for them in their e-mails. 

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in the Philippines over the next five-ten years?  

 The general counsel role in the next five to ten years should be constantly updated in the latest developments in AI and online platforms and should have the creativity and imagination to constantly come up with ways in using various available technology and platforms to improve the way he delivers legal services, and collects valuable data from the services he gives to improve the corporations overall performance. 

The general counsel role will go beyond traditional legal advice and would need to have a data driven approach in identifying pain points in the company’s operations that leads to its cases and strategically addressing the same through preventive measures such as training, education, and even automation and use of AI.  

How do you motivate and manage your legal team well? 

It is difficult to motivate and manage a very lean legal team in a business that really needs to lower costs in manpower and general administrative expenses to make it work. However, I manage and motivate my legal team by driving and encouraging innovation that would make their tasks easier: I come up with free and simple solutions that would help eliminate steps in our processes.  

Secondly, getting to know my team members’ plans for the future and aligning their tasks and learning programs with their future plans.  

Thirdly, I set clear targets, identifying what we need to accomplish together to support their promotion. 

Clarity on expectations and targets makes achieving them easier. It is natural for employees to want upward movement in an organisation and setting clear targets helps in motivating the team to achieve these targets –which should translate to a better team performance.