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

We have been working on corporate, contractual, regulatory and development workflows, in order to attain and maintain the ready to build status of one greenfield solar PV portfolio operating under the PMGD regime, and to mitigate the legal risks flagged on preliminary and final legal due diligence reports prepared for purposes of acquisition and updated for purposes of financing, all this, while seeking financing.

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?

Choosing to work with external lawyers who share the company’s values is extremely important. It leads to legal advice and strategies in tune with the company’s ethical and professional standards, reduces the risk of non-compliant practices, while allowing for a better and more effective communication -less need to explain one-self and how the company does business, handles transactions and faces legal challenges-.

On the other hand, I would one hundred per cent reconsider working with a law firm if there is a misalignment with our core values. I have in the past changed law firms for lack of integrity, accountability, proactivity and efficiency. The last two values are particularly difficult to instil in large law firms, considering the size of their portfolio of clients and the revolving door of transactions. Let me explain further: legal advice and support is not needed in a vacuum, usually is part of a process consisting of various interconnected workstreams, dependant on each other, some more important and flamboyant than others, and any head of legal would agree, that there is nothing worse than having to chase your external legal team on open local matters they supposedly have the lead on -forcing the bad habit to micromanage in order to avoid roadblocks, losing time-buffers, and see progress-, or having to pick up email exchanges and requests to counterparties or other advisers, which have not been successfully concluded, but just forgotten, or are very present, but through sterile actions, without offering an alternative to the weekly follow up email or call, in order to secure the much sought result, or finally, having to rush the preparation of complex deliverables, when the deadlines are well-known weeks in advance, and poor time management is to blame. Responsiveness is also key, and a sign of respect, a cornerstone value.

Considering that we live in a fast-paced world, I would always expect from my legal team to acknowledge any work request on the same day, provide an estimated timing, make queries needed to understand the assignment or instructions, and even share a preliminary response if possible, based on the wealth of legal knowledge and experience that law firms and their different practices have already built-in, or should, especially if the request is time sensitive.

In general, what would you like to see change about the external law firms you use? Examples could be greater flexibility in billing, a more expansive suite of services offered, more transparency in reporting ESG statistics etc.

I would like to see our retained and transaction-specific law firms, to step up on project and task management, billing procedures and knowledge sharing. Most legal requests have a clearly established step plan, and if the right technological tools are implemented, legal teams should be able to provide timely updates and deliverables -without chasers-, until successful completion, while efficiently managing their resources. Real time billables information, even with all the typical disclaimers (WIP, under review, etc.), would be extremely useful to manage resources and in terms of cost predictability –if there is no fixed-fee arrangement in place, or even if there is, in order to anticipate a potential re-negotiation of the terms-, and an online secured platform to comment/object items of the timesheets, with a quicker turnaround, and to follow up the invoicing process (status, responsible lawyer, account manager, etc.), would actually improve law firms billing process. Finally, as mentioned in my previous answer, law firms have tons of useful legal information, and while some have understood and embrace active knowledge sharing as part of their marketing strategy, others just act on command and charge one client -usually the first to ask- for a product that will be shared multiple times. I would like to receive more and better content on legal trends, business opportunities (such as tenders, grants and other benefits, etc.) and regulatory updates.