Team size: circa 200

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

As part of a high-performance company, we have built and maintained an efficient legal area, which works with determination in a service delivery model focused on our business. The results of the JBS legal department are materialised in the generation of value for the company’s various business units and, based on this premise, I present 3 (three) projects recently developed by the JBS legal department, namely (i) JBS Hearings Application and the Web Platform for Inspection and Documentation Control; (ii) Actions taken after publication of the minutes of judgment of ADI5322 relating to the drivers’ law; and (iii) Restructuring of the Contracts and Intellectual Property area, all detailed in the Annex.

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

To achieve success in this position it is necessary to generate value for the business through work carried out in total alignment with the company’s values. It is necessary to have the look and attitude of an owner to lead a legal team with more than 200 people in line with the dynamics of each business, in addition to a lot of determination, simplicity, discipline, frankness, availability and humility. The company’s culture is reflected in the legal department when we carry out work internally. We believe that we can do an excellent job with the internal team, outsourcing only very specific cases. With this spirit, we built a legal structure aligned with the company’s values.

How have you fostered a closer collaboration between the legal department and your business counterparts?

It would be practically impossible to carry out quality defences without knowing the businesses in depth and their respective dynamics. Continuous interaction between legal and business partners takes place daily through complex negotiations on contractual and procedural issues, which results in reduced legal costs and improved efficiency of the legal team.

Our culture is to continually strengthen interactions with our businesses to support them in their decisions. To achieve this, we work with a focus on detail, always very attentive to changes in the dynamics of client areas, seeking to personally understand each activity carried out, including on-site visits to the company’s plants and factories.

Do you have a cause, business-related or otherwise, that you are passionate about?

I am immensely proud to lead the NAE – Business Advocacy Center, at JBS. This is a program that aims to extend and expand the provision of excellent law in several of the company’s business units spread across Brazil. I believe that it is people who make the difference in the company, as it is through human capital that we can achieve our goals and objectives.

Here at JBS, we believe in highly technical law linked to our values, and the NAE comes to expand our scope of hiring for lawyers who work in the business area (labour, civil or procedural areas). Currently, our NAE team has 35 lawyers located from the north to the south of the country, with responsibility for sponsoring more than 30% of JBS’s case portfolio.

We offer training, classes and workshops dedicated to the development of technical and behavioural skills for lawyers who are part of the NAE, in addition to refresher classes on topics such as: Introduction to the Study of Law, General Theory of the Process, General Theory of Obligations, Constitutional Law, Law of Labor, Labor Process, Civil Procedure, Philosophy of Law, taught by professors with masters and doctors, each a reference in their area of ​​expertise.