About

Executive General Counsel Susana Silveira oversees the legal department for Camargo Corrêa, one of Brazil’s largest private conglomerates that has operations domestically and internationally for products spanning real estate, construction, crude oil and natural gas. A lawyer with technical excellence, Silveira is also keen to ensure that complete planning and involvement of staff with complimentary expertise. She describes her management focus as: ‘questioning the purpose of the job to be done; making members engaged as team players; inspiring team members to have a broader view and act accordingly’. Covering the legal support for Camargo Corrêa’s diverse range of businesses, Silveira has attained a wide-ranging knowledge of the different practice areas she oversees. Showing the closeness with which she works with her business partners, she is involved in projects from ‘the very start’. Open to the need for external advice, Silveira believes that designing ‘different fronts of action’ when instructing law firms and giving feedback once the work has been received is an important part of internal legal processes. Silveira cites three main features as being crucial to in-house success: controlled delegation and supervision of quality external counsel; risk management including identification and prioritisation, and dealing with external lawyers in a collaborative way to make ‘them partners, not simply service providers, as this has a huge impact on furthering the client-lawyer relationship and adding to the quality of work they perform’. Silveira expertly combines knowledge obtained from a Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo Law School and a LL.M. from University of Oxford, with technical know-how brought from previous jobs at law firms. Using this combination, she is able to excel in a high-pressure commercial environment.