What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year? 

Central America is a region characterized by abrupt changes and regulatory discussions that do not necessarily happen gradually. This forces the legal departments of companies to maintain a constant state of alert regarding the evolution of all regulations of interest to the company, especially in the environments in which we are regulated. Compliance around the region increases in complexity and variety and that translates in the need of adapting our legal ecosystem to new regulations.  Regulatory developments in privacy and personal data protection, modernization of financial and credit risk policies, strengthening of corporate governance policies, cybersecurity regulations, among others, seem to be a common denominator in the short term for the region. Therefore, one of the challenges of every legal department is to be at the forefront not only of the technical legal aspects but also of the correct understanding of the situations that have an impact on the legal system while maintaining legal operational excellence with efficient resource management.

In which ways have you attempted to bring the legal department closer to your business colleagues? 

Legal departments are often seen as the bottleneck or the filter for problems. Changing this perception and integrating the legal activity of the company to the core business is of utmost importance. Our legal role should be conceived based on basic but fundamental premises: 1. To build relationships of trust between all areas of the company (internal) and with our clients (external). 2. To orient the activity towards the business expectations. 3. Perform a business immersion in order to understand the needs of our business units. 4. Maintain and replicate in our actions the values and organizational culture of the company and last but not least 5. Learn to prioritize. In a dynamic environment, clearly understanding the priorities of the business and their relationship with our legal management is key. Bringing our legal departments to our colleagues should ultimately be a natural action. Just as a colleague requires a financial opinion, data to analyze a solution, comments on the branding of a product, they will most likely appreciate the feedback and legal optics we can provide to them and therefore being able to become a business ally, turning the legal experience into an easily accessible experience.