About

Having begun her in house career at family-owned forestry group, Maderas Condor, Carolina Carrasco-Acuña has been counsel at the Chilean subsidiary of French multinational conglomerate ALSTOM for 11 years. Since 2010 she has also had responsibility for the group’s transport interests in Perú, Colombia and Ecuador. She credits her former experience as having helped her develop her current position from being a day-to-day support role into ‘a necessary tool for the business’, one that plays ‘a vital part in strategic and other-business related decisions throughout the company’, particularly in relation to local contracts. The challenges involved in ‘obtaining favourable terms in the contracts we negotiate’, along with her increasing participation in commercial matters, are two of the aspects of her position that she enjoys most. As the group’s sole counsel, she has extensive experience of law firms, but sometimes finds this aspect of her role less satisfactory. She has little time for legal advice that is insufficiently geared to the clients practical business requirements, particularly as a result of the substitution of partner engagement with relatively less-experienced young lawyers: ‘when private-practice lawyers assists a business, they should, independent of all round professional capability, display greater commitment and orientation towards helping the business practically resolve those matters that are precisely what brought the company to consult them.’