About

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

As a lean legal department it is important to us as legal team to have generalist’s skills and be business oriented. Responsible for the legal department is Richard Alexander Lekitsch with more than 20 years’ experience as corporate consul in big companies. He is involved in all matters, managing the staff and the external law firms and also responsible for the report with the HQ in the US. Renan William Mendes plays a very important role as he backs up Lekitsch while supporting with legal advice, agreements and managing the external law firms. He has very good legal technical skills. William Galvao dos Santos is responsible for supporting the whole legal department, for the management of the external law firms and for the daily activities. He has very good technical skills.

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

Due to the local economic crisis the legal department was involved is discussions related to agreement negotiation, having cost reduction as a target and discussions concerning employee layoffs etc. In this sense, the legal department had an important participation (play an important role) with the discussions and the conduction related to closing of plants (lines of production) i.e. participation from legal perspective with subjects like: mass layoffs, negotiation with union, labour district attorney, suppliers, customers and service providers. At the end was very successful causing no negative impact in the company. In addition, the legal department has worked very hard to reduce and prevent big impacts arising from labour claims. We created a task force to support other departments in order to identify potential risks and consequently was implemented some process to prevent the exposure (prevent future labour claims or reduce its impacts).

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

It must have good legal knowledge, good interpersonal relationship skills, an ability to deal with conflicts, and be business-oriented. In this sense, it is very important to know the business of the company i.e. not to be only a lawyer but also part of the company. It is also important to have the capacity do deal and understand the situations and priority from business perspective.

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

The most difficult hurdles is to demonstrate that the legal department is part of the company and so can also be business-oriented. Can support from legal perspective understanding and interacting with other internal departments i.e. with the whole company. As executive of the legal department, it is important to show that the legal department is not only a department that creates problems and difficult but the department that also (or has as main function) to show /present the risk but also present the alternatives to solve the problems and/or avoid risks.

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

Software to control agreements. As a department part of a big corporation, we are required to issue monthly, quarterly and annually reports for different purposes (internal controls, corporate repots, auditors, etc.) In this sense, is mandatory to have a good and safely software as an important work tool to control and to give confidence on the legal department.

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?

Yes, diversity and inclusion are matters of internal policy on our agenda. As the legal department, we also have a function to adapt and appoint the risk according to the local legislation. In this regard and with the purpose of reinforcing and giving the due importance to this subject, the legal department, performed some events (presentations) to the whole company in different sessions to different employees during the last few years. These presentations included topics on moral and sexual harassment.

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

Labour law reform and data protection law. Regarding the labour law reform, the legal department worked very closely with the HR department in order to analyse potential risks and to support with the necessary guidance. In this sense, the legal department supported HR with the creation of new policies, new controls, etc. Regarding the data protection law, the legal department supported the corporation in order to implement the necessary care in view of the corporate processes and foreign laws already in place. In addition, giving the necessary support in order to be prepared for the implementation of the local law.

Focus on…

Economic change

MWM International (Navistar Group), an independent diesel engine manufacturer, has plants in Sao Paulo and Jesús Maria in Córdoba – Argentina. With 66 years of operation, the company, affiliated with the North American group Navistar, operates in several markets such as Turkey, China, South Korea and Mexico. The company’s products serve the vehicular, agricultural, industrial, power generation and maritime segments.

MWM International also operates in the power generation segment, and is designed for emergency applications, peak times or single source power.

The company is strategically located in Mercosul, with the purpose of serving the region’s customers and working as a base for exporting products to the whole world. Today, the company exports to more than 45 countries around the world.

Due to the faster technological evolution and changes we as legal department, as part of the company are obligated to follow this evolution in order to promptly and properly support the whole company. In addition to that, as complementary factor, we (Brazil and Argentina) suffered a lot with the economic crisis in the last years. In this sense, every employee was obligated to contribute to the company in any form and this was also not different with the legal department.

During this time the legal department was also engaged to support the development of new products, technologies and businesses and also to improve costs reduction, i.e. negotiate new agreements, develop and support business strategies, negotiate with external law firms fees reduction, reduction of headcount with the improvement and optimisation of the actives, etc. At the same time, we were supporting the whole company to achieve the goals we were also engaged to reduce and avoid risks. This process was very important to change the mindset regarding the legal department.

The legal department proved itself and became a partner and part of the structure working to make feasible the business and to “block” the process. With this competent and experienced legal team, MWM International’s (Navistar Group’s) operations in Brazil and across Mercosul are in very safe hands from a legal standpoint.