Team size: 12

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

Nowadays, technology is a very important tool for in-house legal teams to improve delivery time, bring traceability and guarantee access to information. In Cervecería Nacional, we have launched the ‘transformation strategy’, which answers how to improve legal services based on technology. We decided to create a Legal Operations position in our team according to this strategy. We also decided to implement the first technology projects for the legal department: 1) We developed a WhatsApp legal chatbot to answer frequent questions and send public legal documents for business proceedings; 2) We implemented Webdox, a digital platform for contract management and license and permits traceability. Nowadays, we have included five business areas in Webdox to deliver processes on time with full traceability and a complete contract repository with more than 2000 documents. We will continue working on improving our legal services with technology and innovation.

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 my ten years linked to the legal and corporate affairs department of Cervecería Nacional, I have actively participated in the company’s transformation process and observed how the involvement of the legal department is increasingly necessary from the beginning in the business decision-making process. But how does the legal department get involved from the start and not be overwhelmed by the impetus of the commercial team? It is not an easy task, but it is possible if you act with agility, resilience, and creativity without sacrificing the professionalism and scientific rigour of the recommendations provided to the business. In my experience, legal departments earn a place at the decision table when the company understands and feels that we add value to the discussions and help creatively navigate the grey areas in each decision. In this context, legal departments add value to discussions when we seek to understand business cases, identify legal risks, and quantify their economic impact genuinely and open-mindedly. To achieve this, the legal team must be fully and agilely involved in the analysis of the business case, which requires not only a legal review but also that the lawyers challenge the financial, commercial, or technical arguments provided by the other business areas, to achieve a better risk analysis that increases the level of certainty about the consequences of the decision. From this comes the need for the legal department members to be lawyers who know, mainly, the reality of the business and who have bonds of trust with the other areas of the company to influence them through agile and transparent communication. It is important that risk analysis does not become a bureaucratic process but a generative dialogue that lets both parties learn and move forward.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

Showing interest closeness and trying to understand the business deeply. In the latest service satisfaction survey prepared by the ODDS Legal consultancy for Cervecería Nacional in September 2022, 73% of the internal clients surveyed responded that the most critical factor to recognize the quality of their legal department is their knowledge of the business. In second and third place were the speed (71%) and clarity (62%) with which the legal department brings its recommendations. In the same way, 89% of the surveyed responded that they were satisfied with the level of knowledge of the business that the legal department of Cervecería Nacional possesses. In this analysis, we also identified that our legal department spends 51.8% of its time in meetings and calls to understand cases and advise business areas. In comparison, only 16% of our time is dedicated to legal reports. This reflects that the different business areas highly value shared work and permanent support in decision-making.