Team size: 22 people

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

We live in a time in which we are constantly faced with crises or instabilities and organisations have to quickly adapt to these different scenarios. Legal teams and the general counsel, as leader of these teams, must be prepared to anticipate risks, be agile, flexible and practical.

It is essential that legal departments know very closely the business strategy and its plan for the coming years in order to be able to adequately plan the legal advice required to carry out the business in a safe, practical and efficient manner. To do this, the general counsel has to align the objectives of the legal team with the company’s business strategy, and this alignment will be more effective when the legal area participates from the beginning in the definition of that strategy, and in each plan, activity or initiative that is defined to achieve it, since early support helps to anticipate legal, reputational and any other type of risks, which could be an obstacle to achieving the strategy defined by the company in the future, and mitigate them so that the company can work in the best way.

Thus, prevention is a key factor to prepare the company for difficult times, and to achieve this it is necessary to have a 360° vision that contemplates the business, regulations and what is happening economically and politically in the country and abroad. In the face of a crisis, the legal team must be closer than ever to the business and other areas, accompanying and prioritising relevant and urgent matters, without neglecting legal compliance and the company’s reputation.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

SMU has a comprehensive approach to sustainability related to the company’s future vision and the ability to manage economic, social and environmental performance across its businesses, within a framework of integrity and transparent corporate behaviour. The role of the general counsel is relevant in the development of the sustainability model, supporting the construction and execution of the company’s strategy in this regard, in addition to ensuring the establishment of ethical guidelines and regulatory compliance in the development of business and promote a solid corporate governance for the company.

One of the strategic pillars of SMU is to be a “committed and sustainable organisation”, and the role of our legal team is to support the construction of the guidelines, criteria and policies with which the company manages sustainability, and to accompany each of the initiatives of this pillar by evaluating the legal viability of each of them, the reputational impacts and transparent compliance.