How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises requires a multifaceted approach that aligns closely with the broader business strategy to ensure organisational resilience. As the head of legal, compliance, and data privacy for South LATAM, my strategy revolves around the following key principles:

Anticipating potential legal risks and preparing for various crisis scenarios is crucial. This involves conducting regular risk assessments and developing contingency plans.

Maintaining robust communication channels within the organisation and with external stakeholders is vital. During a crisis, timely and transparent communication can mitigate legal risks and maintain trust. At Merck, the legal team is part of the crisis management team, allowing for real-time legal guidance on decisions and actions. Additionally, regular updates to employees, regulators, and business partners help manage expectations and demonstrate our commitment to compliance and ethical practices.

Moreover, in times of instability, ensuring adherence to legal and regulatory requirements becomes even more critical. We continuously monitor changes in regulations and adapt our compliance programs accordingly. This proactive stance helps avoid legal pitfalls and maintains our license to operate.

Aligning the legal strategy with the broader business strategy is essential for resilience. This involves understanding the company’s strategic goals and ensuring that our legal approach supports these objectives. For example, if the business strategy focuses on digital transformation, the legal team works to address data privacy concerns, cybersecurity risks, and regulatory compliance for digital initiatives. This alignment ensures that legal considerations are embedded in business decisions from the outset, reducing the risk of conflicts and enhancing strategic agility.

Effective crisis management requires a well-defined business continuity plan. Legal must be involved in the designing and update of these plans, ensuring they address potential legal issues such as contract disputes, liability concerns, and regulatory compliance. By having these plans in place, we can minimise disruptions and maintain operations even during crises.

Empowering the teams through trainings is another critical aspect. Ensuring that team members are well-versed in crisis management and have the necessary skills to handle high-pressure situations enhances our overall resilience. Additionally, fostering a culture of compliance and ethical behaviour throughout the organisation helps mitigate risks and ensures a unified response during crises.

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?

As head of legal, compliance, and data privacy for South LATAM in a chemical and pharmaceutical multinational company, understanding and leveraging emerging technologies is crucial for staying ahead in the legal profession. Several key technologies are poised to significantly impact the legal landscape soon, and staying updated on these developments requires a proactive and strategic approach.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming various aspects of the legal profession. These technologies enhance the efficiency and accuracy of legal research, contract review, and compliance monitoring. AI-driven tools can analyse vast amounts of data quickly, identify patterns, and provide insights that would be time-consuming and challenging for humans to achieve.

The rise of legal tech solutions, such as contract management software, e-discovery tools, and compliance platforms, is revolutionising how legal departments operate. These technologies streamline processes, reduce manual workloads, and improve accuracy. Merck provides us with many tools for our daily legal and compliance work such as contract management platforms, third parties risk management systems, among others who contribute to ensure the fulfilment of legal, compliance and internal requirements.

Since 2019, I am the leader of Merck LATAM digital and social media task force, which analyses, since a legal, compliance and data privacy perspective, all the new digital initiatives to be implemented in one or more affiliates of Latam. We work very closely to the regulatory and the IT team and during the last years I have acquired important knowledge and experience in the management of digital projects proposed by the business-like webs, applications, social media platforms and different digital solutions for problems of our internal and/or external stakeholders. This activity implies a “continues learning” for me and all the members of the legal team.