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

One of the most significant cases I must refer to is a $60m bid regarding a construction project offshore. The legal team played a key role in reviewing all pre-contractual and contractual documents, highlighting the main risks, and drafting mitigation clauses. Additionally, illegal regulations issued by the government have brought several challenges. The legal team has had the task of designing and deploying a strategy against such regulations, which included judicial and administrative actions. We were able to obtain a favourable outcome, avoiding the application of such regulations to Cosapi.

How do you feel the pandemic has changed the world of work for in-house counsel and the function of the general counsel?

Covid has transformed the way we work and interact with colleagues. Regarding in-house teams and general counsel function, the most significant changes are: (i) the accelerated turn to tech tools for the legal function and the use of agile methodologies, (ii) the strengthening of communication skills due to remote working to maintain high the motivation of teams, (iii) greater focus on results, KPIs and quality of legal service.

What are some of the key developments – legal, geopolitical or otherwise – that have affected your business over the past year?

Well, I must say that the political uncertainty which exists throughout the South American region is clearly a factor that has been altering the company’s corporate strategy. In addition, the crisis generated by the pandemic forced the design of more agile business structures with more capacity to adapt to ambiguous and uncertain contexts. The greater rigidity of some regulations (such as labour) has demanded greater creativity in legal teams to find solutions to make business more viable with acceptable costs. Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? The development of new legal communication and collaboration tools and the application to the daily work of UX and EX concepts and tools, together with legal design agile methodologies and customer-centricity concepts, will impact the future of in-house legal teams the most.