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?

Partnering with law firms aligned with the company’s values is crucial for proper handling of demands, whether in the legal area or in the compliance area. Currently, I dare say that it is not enough just to be specialized in some area of law, but knowing your client’s business and their operations, products and services are part of the day to day of external lawyers.

Along the same lines, the company’s values, mission, policies and strategy also need to be widely disseminated to external law firms. After all, we are business partners and interaction need to be done on a routine basis. Having all this, I understand that the level of the legal services becomes broader and more effective. As a result, the company and the external office will have a long-term and lasting relationship.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

Artificial Intelligence has already arrived, and I have no doubt that there will be changes in the way companies’ legal areas work. Legal market already offers platforms for managing contracts, corporate documents, lawsuit and among others. Currently, the legal team of the company I work for has developed an internal platform to meet the demand for contract requests more efficiently. With this platform, it is possible, for example, to extract KPIs on the time of analysis time of a contract, know which area of the company requires more analysis, which types of contracts are most used, among other data.

In general, what would you like to see change about the external law firms you use? Examples could be greater flexibility in billing, a more expansive suite of services offered, more transparency in reporting ESG statistics etc.

Currently, I would like law firms to engage with the ESG topic. I believe that more and more companies will ask their business partners to also submit their data on environmental, social and corporate governance. These actions are already being seen as a criterion for hiring companies and I have no doubt that this practice is a step forward. In fact, hiring and maintaining gender diversity in offices has already become a demand, for example.