Country: Costa Rica.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved the way your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Three years ago, the legal department suffered a reduction in staff of more than 50%. The above made it necessary to provide a quality service with excellent response time, less human resources and budget limitations. Consequently, procedures and processes were simplified, automated and in some cases eliminated, making, for example, authorisations to prepare and sign contracts much faster, and reducing unnecessary duplication. Likewise, contractual automation processes were implemented, and a pool of responses prepared for the most frequent queries is maintained, along with formats for self-service for internal clients.

What are some of the key developments (legal, geopolitical or otherwise) that have affected your business over the last year?

Private higher education is a highly regulated sector, which is why it is susceptible to receiving circulars, guidelines or regulations from authorities that could eventually prevent the full academic development of an institution. The main challenge is to monitor all these supervisory regulations, prevent them from being arbitrary or manage them so that their respective application is reasonable and does not affect the operation of the universities.

How do you think the in-house legal role will evolve in the coming years?

The legal role will have two evolutions: i) on the one hand it will have a special role as it will manage new risks, and interesting opportunities that arise with new technologies (AI, big data); ii) depending on the push of the general counsel, and based on the regulatory desire of the states as a result of the emergence of new technologies, the ‘in-house’ will necessarily combine their role as legal advisor along with that of business administrator. Areas such as operations, asset management, relations with banks, commercial and even finance may require a leader from the legal area since this is transversal.

Do you use any legal technology products and, if so, what areas of your work do you find it most useful for?

Yes, I use an automated contract management system. We need to implement software for case management and ethics and compliance case management.