US multinational consumer products seller Avon has an established presence in Latin America and utilises an innovative four-person legal team based in Buenos Aires to cover Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Uruguay. Legal director for south markets Guillermo Grela heads the team and explains its setup: ‘Legal manager Juan Bun’s main area of focus is commercial and corporate law, while for legal junior manager María del Carmen Imerone it is labour law and legal operations. Manuela Mizraje (legal analyst) is a recently graduated lawyer who provides assistance to both [Bun] and [Imerone]’.

Together the team has contributed to the success of a number of company achievements in the last three years such as the closure of business in Bolivia, the outsourcing of the picking and shipping function in Chile, the automatisation of the picking line in Argentina and the launch of a new business model pilot in Buenos Aires. The legal team has also exemplified a strong integrations with the company by ‘[reshaping] the business’ perception of the legal function by showing a real service attitude towards the business and its goals’, according to Grela. To this end the team has run an internal client satisfaction survey and launched an intranet website, an initiative with the goal of strengthening the department’s ‘bond with the business by showing the team legal information in a very appealing way while conveying legal information relevant for the business’. Additionally the team has implemented a bespoke IT solution for contract management in the markets it serves and engaged a legal process outsourcing firm to get cost-effective advice for mid to low-complexity contracts. Summing up the result of the legal team’s efforts, Grela had this to say: ‘The team has changed the business mind set about legal, by showing the legal function as a partner, which contributes to anticipating problems by being proactive and participating in different projects from the very beginning’.