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Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured?

The legal team in Brazil is organised by function. A commercial team, called sales and delivery, is responsible for negotiating and managing client contracts. A “CORE” team is responsible for vendor contracts, compliance, offerings, regulatory, employment and immigration. We also have a litigation and investigations team. Digital and strategic offerings, ventures and acquisitions, alliances and IP are supported at the global level with support from the local team. The sales and delivery team is comprised of Katia Porto – managing director, Latin America and Iberia lead – who handles contract management; Gabriela Badi – managing director, Brazil lead – who handles complex contracting; and Tania Weinschenker – associate managing director, Latin America lead – who handles transaction contracting. The CORE team is comprised of Renata Ventura – Brazilian lead – who covers Geo Services – compliance, ethics and regulatory aspects; Laiza Silva who handles labour and employment; Renata Regino handling regulatory and corporate; and Fernanda Mosqueira handling offerings. Litigation and investigations is led by Glaucia Callegari.

In our last round of research you mentioned that your team had conducted a significant restructuring of the roles and divisions within the team, a “specialisation and segmentation process” designed to optimise efficiency.

We created a step change in quality and productivity using technology, contract standardization and simplification and matching right skills, right cost and right shore, that is, the allocation of professionals to work on deals depending on the skills needed for the deal, at the most adequate cost.

On the procurement side, this project is enabling greater speed to contract and efficiencies making Accenture easier to do business with. Being able to procure goods and services at speed is critical to Accenture’s success in the future. While increasing speed to contract, we also reduced the cost of contracting while leveraging our best templates in a consistent manner. In Latin America, we reduced time of the whole procurement process from three weeks to 45 minutes; the cost per contract from US$108 to US$9 and reduced the hours spent in reviews by 30%, while experiencing an increase in volume of 250%.

We’re now able to make more data-driven decisions based on insights and information we are collecting. The technology we applied and developed also had an impact on the inclusion of people with disabilities, as the system is accessible to the point that one of the lawyers responsible for the review of contracts is visually impaired.

On the sales side, we manage risk using an insights platform that enables us to better understand our risk profile globally to drive better decisions around our contracting positions. We are incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and new technology solutions to give us agility in navigating our portfolio of contracts, templates and clauses library, to drive consistency as well as to enable free time for our lawyers to become fully tech enabled to be in a better position to add value to the business and reduce time spent on repetitive and non-value add activities. This led to the specialisation of the team, something that is key in our industry due to the rapid transformation of the market with new offerings in the digital space, using ai, analytics, cloud, SaaS, etc., with alternative business models.

Our advice to other teams that are conducting similar initiatives are: embrace the change; adapt your mind set and processes to embrace the new solutions out there to capture their benefits instead of adapting them to old processes; be disruptive on the selection of technologies that will support the change; and be a learner, the legal world is changing and there are really cool things out there.

In your multinational organisation, are programmes of diversity and inclusion led by the international parent company or group? Or is it led by the local organisation on the ground?

We have both, we focus on five pillars: gender, PcD, LGBT and culture and religions. Among several recognitions the consultancy won the first position at the Ethos Diversity Exam Guide 2019. In Latin America we have been successful on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the legal team and we also won awards for being a good place for women to develop their careers.

Focus on…

Technology

Legal X.0 – What is in it for us in the “Fourth Revolution”?

As the world dwells on the tidal wave of the Fourth Revolution, brought by technological innovations and powered by exponential organisations, what does it mean for us, in-house counsels? What is the new role for legal in this rapidly changing world, where communication, collaboration, agility, resilience, complexity and simplification all need to coexist and live harmoniously?

There is an ongoing shift, from relying on outside experts to using in-house legal departments, as companies realised that knowledge capital was not consolidated in one single place, usually segregated per matter in different locations, and that the Company actually needed a strong internal legal department that would understand the business and interpret the legal matters and support the implementation within the company. This shift proved to be successful, as this was a change implemented marketwise and worldwide. But now, in the midst of this monsoon of business transformations, and the onset of artificial intelligence, how do we keep up? That’s the challenge and the beauty of it… we adapt. We are given the amazing opportunity to embrace this revolution and evolve, become the real change agents and trusted business advisors, in the time where the speed at which our world and our businesses are changing, we need to apply our legal expertise to enable business decisions in rocky grounds, to situations our legislations never conceived. We get to support our businesses as we see our cultures break boundaries, integrate new and older generations to extract the best of both in a work environment that embraces their differences and salutes them. We get to adjust our work schedules to accommodate our personal priorities (thanks to the i-gadgets and alike!), we get to dress our day and bring our best selves to work every day.

We get to benefit from technologies that can alleviate us from burdensome and repetitive tasks, while we get to focus on investing on our continuous learning journey. Where we leave our comfort zone on a daily basis and are challenged and challenge the status quo as part of our jobs. As we say at Accenture, we get to lead at a time of epic disruption. We are absolutely privileged!