Focus on the life as a general counsel

General counsel for a mid-small company are responsible for handling a wide range of legal topics efficiently. It does not matter how comfortable you feel in an area of law; your advice will have a massive influence on the decision-making process and the management team.

The modern general counsel will have to play different roles to tackle areas of the law as diverse as corporate governance, insurance law, employment law, litigation, M&A, trademark law, and real estate law. They must become business partners to the organisation. It is not enough to be responsible for everything legal in modern corporate life; general counsel are required to insert themselves into the core of the business, adding value with their unique view.

Life is excellent for a modern GC (not easy, but great). What is wonderful is that it is varied and that you can spend a lot of time developing new skills and learning new things. The challenge is adding to your capabilities things not commonly taught in law school or at a law firm. Having diverse legal knowledge and skills is necessary, but you will also need personal effectiveness, an entrepreneurial mindset and adaptability. A modern general counsel will have to acquire business and operations competencies. Along with increased soft skills that help counsel collaborate across functional areas, lawyers need some hard business knowledge and skills that can help them bring value.

The last few years have been a plethora of new regulations, and Chile has not been an exception. New regulations have driven the industry to considerable development in the energy sector. A decade ago, there was great uncertainty about future sources of energy for our country. This scenario has been changing to such an extent that today we are in complete energy matrix transformation. All this innovation in the power generation sector has been a long-standing challenge, which required more than a decade to get to where we are now by putting together an appropriate institutional policy which favoured private investment and promoted the adoption of modern technologies.

This ever-changing regulatory environment has deepened the requirements for different skills for any GC in the industry, as today is not only necessary to tackle many areas of the law and develop new business skills, but you will also need to maintain yourself on the leading lines of the sector that your company participates in.