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?  

To ensure the company’s operation in periods of crisis or instability, it is necessary to: learn, train and apply the new laws that were issued due to the crisis by the government, the congress and local authorities.  

Align the leading actions of the management to face the crisis with the legal decisions. In this point it is important to encourage your team and your internal client to compliance.  

Simplify legal processes without losing legal rigour, allowing be more agile internal processes to take faster decisions; use technological tools that allow the efficient management of the company’s legal needs and a quicker answer. Promote soft and high-performance team skills such as: assertive and effective communication, strategic leadership, initiatives for superior results, teamwork and effective relationships. 

What are the main cases or transactions you have been involved in recently?  

I recently participated in two large negotiations of the company: (i) the long-term supply of raw materials with two of the company’s main and larger suppliers, which, after days of negotiation of commercial and legal terms, ended with the signing of the two contracts. (ii) The sale of a company property which, after several meetings to define legal terms of the contract with the external lawyer of the buyer, they decided to abandon the purchase due to the country’s risk. 

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?  

Technologies such as AI and blockchain (smart contracts) will have a great impact on legal counsel, since tasks such as writing a contract or resolving legal questions from internal clients can be carried out by artificial intelligence programs. In addition, AI tools and smart contracts will improve the legal department’s time on daily tasks, allowing to be focused on strategy and legal projects 

To stay update, together with my team, we look spaces probe AI tools, and how we can adapt them to our needs, to provide a better service. 

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?  

Manuelita Group has included in the strategy environmental and social KPI’s to all Group companies. So, the board of directors is continually measuring those KPIs as part of the results of the company. More recently has been declared that it will be carbon neutral by 2040, and it will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030.  

In Manuelita Palm Oil Business we have the following achievements: we became the first company in the palm oil business to achieve carbon credit for having projects which help to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in our operations; our products (oil palm and biodiesel) have sustainability certifications by the RSPO and ISCC. That means that we meet all the environmental, social, economics and legal sustainable standards. 

My contribution as general legal counsel to ensure sustainable practices are: ensure the legal compliance of the company in subjects such as legal property of the land (owning and from our raw material suppliers) and environmental legal obligations; Participating in sustainability certifications audits to demonstrate the legal compliance of the company.