About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department?

The Amcor legal team in Latin America is a flat organisation in which the regional general counsel resides at the top and has all the lawyers who, regardless of experience level or expertise are all peers and report functionally to the general counsel. A legal manager is in charge to help manage the team/budget and is also responsible to support our commercial team. Furthermore, we have specialist lawyers in charge of purchasing and supply chain, subsidiary management and litigation teams. This structure allows the individual teams to function at their best capacity and handle any situation that arises in the sector in order to focus on the legal core business and outperform. Finally, even though the entire team is based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, all lawyers support more than ten other countries in South & Central America, including Mexico where AMCOR LATAM has businesses.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years?

Amcor is a global leader in developing and producing environmentally sustainable packaging for food, beverages, pharmaceutical, medical, home – and personal care – and other products. Recently, Amcor works in unison with Bemis Company, another giants in this sector, creating a new Amcor with the goal of becoming the largest firm in the industry worldwide. As expected, the legal team was closely involved in all the procedures regarding the merger and integration of these two well-matched companies into the new Amcor. Since then, the whole company and legal team has been working on to finalising our integration goals, acting quickly to capitalise on the growing success. Taking advantage of the available benefits will hasten and strengthen success. In this scenario, many challenges and opportunities are being discussed and the legal team is supporting the business to make the right decisions.

What attributes are essential for an in-house legal team to possess?

The essential attributes for us is to be business oriented, conciliating ownership and legal certainties. We mean, in our concept that the legal team must understand the necessities of the business working in harmony with the team to achieve our targets defined by the head office with the main focus being on risk versus opportunities. This mind-set is essential considering the individual needs of each country across Latin America.

What are the most difficult hurdles to overcome when attempting to demonstrate value added by the legal team?

The biggest challenges for an active legal department include having to spend a large portion of our time on preventative work measuring and demonstrating costs. It can often be a challenge to obtain accurate figures to present to the internal clients, as well as head office. So, it is a challenge to prove accurate numbers in order to bring clarity to our business operations. Transferring numbers to an easily read graphical chart and legal information should be considered a high priority for legal work. Our business values visibility, predictability and creativity above all else. Discussing legal alternatives to anticipate potential risks, expediting processes and procedures to make sure they are shared among the relative individuals in order to shake off the old lawyer image and bring our company to a higher standard that is easy to approach and do business within the modern world.

What “legal tech” products does the team utilise? What is useful about the products and how could they be improved?

Last year a new system was implemented to control and manage law suits, as well as provide accurate reports to the stakeholders and members of the legal department itself. The new system allows stakeholders, internal clients, outside counsel, in-house lawyers and whoever the legal department allows may access the system anytime, anywhere to receive an up to date report of the current process and get the information relevant to them. The system is also helpful to control the amount involved, accruals and judicial deposits. Other workflow systems are also in place especially related to commercial excellence such as Value Plus, Procure Plus and Risk Management System. The systems help the team to be more efficient and also more accurate on strategies to be proposed. Legal believes having accurate information available is fundamental to making quick decisions.

Is diversity and inclusion as a matter of internal policy on the agenda at your company? How much influence do you, as an in-house legal team, have on the diversity and inclusion policies of your organisation?

Amcor is currently in an integration period due to the merger of the two companies mentioned above, so many policies are under review, including the ones related to diversity and inclusion. However, these topics remain a high priority. As an in house legal team, we follow the procedures laid out by
the company guidelines and also support any global initiative dedicated to those subjects. All and each member in the legal team is a well-trained person with high qualifications and no other criteria (gender, nationality, culture, sexual orientation, etc) is/was considered to their appointments to any jobs, but we understood that this is not enough and it is important to actively work to build awareness about unconscious bias. Educating employees to review, question and analyse their own personal potential biases and assumptions is powerful for real change.

Have any new laws, government policies, regulations or judicial decisions greatly impacted your company’s business or your
legal practice?

Brazilian Labour Reform impacts the whole labour litigation industry. Companies in general used to frequently receive completely unfounded labour lawsuits and this was a completely loss of time and money, which obviously becomes a cost to the company. After this new labour legislation, the profile of labour claims changed dramatically and cases are more technical and sophisticated which is positive because companies eventually learn from them and this helps to avoid potential future risks. So, more than ever it is necessary to have a strategic view of all labour cases to help the company mitigate labour risks or costs. Another, relevant legislation in Brazil is LGPD, which is going to involve many different departments in the company to assure we are in compliance.