Team size: Six

Major legal advisers: Posse Herrera Ruiz, Gómez-Pinzón, Baker McKenzie, CMS Rodriguez-Azuero.

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

Since 2020, we began transformation of our legal department, which has significantly impacted the way we work and deliver services to our clients. The +Legal, as we call this project, consists of three phases:

1. We trained our lawyers in legal design and innovation, allowing us to redesign our contracts for operations in Colombia, Chile, and Mexico with simple and clear language. This has helped us build trusted relationships with clients and suppliers.

2. We built a legal services hub that centralises our knowledge and makes it accessible to all company employees. This enables them to self-manage in an agile and efficient manner.

3. We implemented a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system and constructed a legal services hub for all our collaborators.

The combination of these three elements, achieved through a modest investment and the internal efforts of various company departments, has positioned us at the forefront of in-house legal services. In 2022, Webdox, a CLM provider, recognised us as the most innovative CLM project of the year. We were also runners-up in an internal contest that recognises innovation projects.

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years?

I believe that the main changes that will occur are related to automation and the use of artificial intelligence tools for contract analysis and drafting, due diligence, research, and document management. Secondly, I think that data analytics will enable the anticipation of legal risks, measurement of performance, and accountability for the legal team’s performance. Thirdly, the legal department is expected to play a leading role in business strategy, becoming a business player rather than just a business partner and this entails having a profound knowledge of the business and the stakeholders.