Team size: 25

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

We managed the Chapter 11 process and underlying litigation for one of our subsidiaries, involving more than US$1bn. It was a very demanding transaction with multi-jurisdictional issues involving lawyers in Chile, Colombia, Brazil, New York, and Delaware.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

Sharing values with external counsel is not only relevant: it is essential. One of the advantages of the legal profession is that, for a particular matter, there may be multiple legal approaches. In-house lawyers need the opinion of external advisors on how to approach these issues. If values are not shared with such an external counsel, the approaches offered by the external advisor will not fit with the overall culture and values of the company, resulting in legal advice that is inappropriate for the business. Avoiding this conflict is one of the most relevant tasks of an in-house lawyer so that the external lawyer can add value to the company by providing legal advice that fits the cultural DNA.

Why are in-house lawyers well-placed to drive change in their organisations?

In modern companies, in-house counsel are much more than risk advisors who provide decision-makers with relevant information to drive business forward. On the contrary, today’s in-house counsel are business-oriented professionals who, in addition to assessing risk, keep abreast of legal and business trends, represent the firm in industry-wide forums, are the voice of the firm to stakeholders, and provide business insights tailored to specific new regulations or changing legal frameworks. In-house counsel is called upon to lead in a generally changing legal and regulatory environment, which is becoming more complex every year.

As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

In this fast-paced world we are living in, the key characteristic for a successful in-house lawyer is the delicate balance between thorough review and speed of response. Napoleon once said: “Dress me slowly, for I am in a hurry”. In our profession, this observation makes perfect sense. In a complex legal world, with multiple factors surrounding a single legal decision, the most successful lawyer is not the one who comes up with a good answer quickly, but the one who gives a complete answer in a reasonable time.