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

As a payroll and human capital management provider, ADP deals with highly sensitive personal data. Our Latin America legal team worked with the business in the implementation of global privacy standards, as also applicable under recently introduced regulations, such as the Brazilian general data protection law, very challenging to our business in Latin America. Also, we actively participated in commercial contracting with various global clients and in compliance initiatives, such as FCPA compliance, labour and tax compliance impacting our services and ethics. Lastly, we supported our business partners during the pandemic and participated in multiple diversity and inclusion initiatives.

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

Lawyers need to know the business, including its main challenges and top priorities, to be able to deliver the best legal support. The old saying that lawyers don’t know about numbers doesn’t exist anymore. In-house lawyers need to understand the numbers, what the company is good at and what are the challenges for the short and long terms. This information is key for a proper prioritisation of resources, risk assessment, and, above all, to give the team the right direction as they are supporting the daily activities of the business.

What are some of the main legislative or regulatory changes that have impacted you?

ADP was heavily impacted by changes in labour regulation due to the pandemic, not only in Brazil, but around the globe. One of our main goals is to offer effective and timely services in full compliance with applicable regulation. Changes in labour relations, impacted by home-based work, heavily impacted our business, as payroll is a business that can’t stop or delay. I am proud that ADP as a business, with the support of our legal team, has been able to adapt its services and products to the new Covid-19 regulations, in a timely manner, allowing our clients to take advantage of benefits of regulations that gave them more flexibility to survive through the pandemic.