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

As a consultancy group, we are constantly supporting clients in organising their businesses in the most different sectors, such as medical devices, employment organisations, or mining. So, we are often faced with different challenges and the main goal is to be able to offer the best solution in the fastest way possible. I am glad to say that we have accomplished the delivery of critical projects in incredibly fast timings recently, including incorporating new client entities in less than 4 weeks, which is amazing considering timings in Brazil.

As my role includes the management of operations, aside from legal counselling, a big task has been to reorganise the operation, optimising structures and readjusting to a new post-pandemic work environment, whilst pursuing aggressive business targets, that we gladly can say at this point to have achieved.

As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

I have always believed that in-house counsel must understand more than just legal matters. A full understanding of operations and a good economic overview are fundamental, as the in-house counsel must be able to provide solutions that are not only pro-business, but also in line with the sectorial and market economics. Just being a good technical lawyer or having the academic credentials is not enough, that is for sure.

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

Reality is that in-house lawyers must know who their business partners are and by that, I mean not only the company’s credentials or a couple of senior partners. Meeting, exchanging knowledge, and learning what is the expertise of your partners is key to understanding what support you can require from a business partner, or if you must consider looking for other partners. And this is only achieved by getting to know the people, the full team that is assigned to support the company you are representing. And once these relations are created, one must nurture it, by keeping close contact and communication and refreshing these contacts constantly, as teams often change.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

I believe the selection of external lawyers needs to align, not only with the company’s values, but also with personal. How the law firms treat their personnel, for example, will reflect the quality of their work, which in the end is what I will be getting as the hiring party. Choosing a firm that has the same values and making it clear that it was part of the selection process, will incentivise such practices.