Does the team make use of any ‘legal tech’ products, and if so, for which areas of your job do you find it most useful?

We use two main tools, one of which was developed by Accenture to complement preexisting tools and is a contract repository named ALICE (Accenture Legal Intelligent Contract Exploration). Accenture has scanned and included 100% of its contracts in an artificial intelligence repository. The platform allows attorneys to look for contracts, specific clauses, and import language to create new contracts based on preexisting ones. This allows professionals to have all precedents with certain clients to speed up the creation of new contracts as well as have a useful “live” repository.

Also, Accenture has put together a platform based on different third-party tools and platforms named Manage my Deals (MMD). This platform connects with the new business pipeline and allows the business and legal team to have full control and visibility of the status of all negotiations taking place. The platform includes artificial intelligence and analytics which allow the platform to identify trends in the market, the risks that clients are asking Accenture to assume, and the type of engagements. This allows Accenture leadership to identify predictability and make consistent decisions across all regions.

What do you think are the biggest risks facing your industry now and how are you preparing your company and team to face these risks?

There is an ‘immature’ understanding of the implications of the new business technological solutions in the Latin America region. Legal professionals need companies to invest in the training of the legal teams.

The new technological solutions require knowledge of not only local laws and regulations but regulations from other countries. The best example is cloud-based solutions where personal data from a Latin American country may be exported to the countries where the largest and safest data centres are located (such as Amazon or Microsoft European Data Centres). Companies going through transformations and modernisation need to invest in their teams, including the legal team, to acquire the best solutions.

Accenture is investing in training for all professionals including the legal team. In parallel, we have an initiative where the legal team is delivering presentations to the client’s legal teams and procurement teams to ensure negotiations are based on a “knowledge basis” and to make sure the right discussions take place.

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

One of the most interesting projects has been the initiative to train legal and procurement teams from our clients. We provided, as a Latin American team, training sessions to more than 25 clients in the region during 2021, where our Latin American team provided basic knowledge and perspective regarding topics such as cloud computing, cybersecurity, data privacy, technology, and business process services.

The knowledge acquired will allow the legal professionals and procurement teams of our strategic clients to have more assertive negotiations with all technology and consulting services.

Another exciting project was supporting a Latin American based “Unicorn” company. The participation of the business team, together with the legal team provided a contractual vehicle to enable the client to escalate quickly and provide easy tools to hire projects from Accenture to support an exponential growth pace from the client.