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

Our team in Brazil and Latin America has been involved in several cases relevant to Getinge’s business, such as sales and service support for public and private customers. We have been actively working side by side with the business areas, advising on the best strategies and approaches to operate in the MedTech industry, which is highly regulated and has a significant impact on people’s lives. Getinge’s commitment to compliance in the MedTech industry also drives us to work on significant research and collaboration projects, looking for a new application for our product portfolio and innovation.

Our team combines legal, compliance and governance, which gives us the opportunity to support the company’s business strategy and with a holistic view. In recent years, the company’s main policies were revisited by the team and a great journey of training and interaction with internal stakeholders began. Our team has developed an excellent compliance program that inspires responsible leadership. In addition, we implemented global contract management with sales business partners, driven by a combination of process and software, connecting all areas involved in the engagement of a distributor or sales agent. These relationships can represent a variety of risks to map and manage.

Did the pandemic lead to a lasting increase in the interaction your legal team has with the strategic plans of the company?

No matter what we do in Getinge, we all work to save lives. Getinge is one of the world’s biggest makers of medical ventilators, as the company increased its production in 2020, by 160%, to 26,000 ventilators to meet demand spurred by the pandemic. Getinge also has equipment for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation therapy, and specialised professionals who have also developed alternatives for using anesthesia machines as ICU ventilators, which was crucial to saving the lives of critical Covid-19 patients. At our legal and compliance team, during that period, we had the opportunity to work closer on the company’s strategy, enabling the businesses with legal and compliance advice.

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.

Law firms need to see themselves as a continuity of their clients, being attentive to companies’ values and new ethical standards, such as human rights and ESG. I see human rights in the spotlight now, and I expect law firms to make good management of their teams, observing the number of hours worked per week or per day by their junior or mid-level personnel. I don’t think it’s acceptable anymore to have junior lawyers working around 15 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.

Another important issue is to innovate in how they price their services, seeking alternatives to charges for hours worked, building alternative fee arrangements with fixed amounts or caps. Companies increasingly need to be predictive in their budgets and have a good view of the full picture and long-term partnership.