What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

Personally, I think the biggest challenge that we faced has been to continue strengthening our in-house legal area, taking into account the post-Covid context, the non-need to hire external legal services, and the political situation of our country.

In our company, we are implementing a process so that the in-house legal team can automate the most used processes, in such a way that, for example, certain inquiries, agreements or general documents can be made available to the commercial areas when they are required. Thus, legal support will be required only when necessary, saving time and resources. In addition, we are providing training spaces so that the legal area is not required on all issues.

Likewise, we continue to improve our legal strategies before municipal, judicial, criminal, and administrative authorities, among others. The experience we have regarding these cases helps us to design strategies which allows us to deal with each case, claim, and fine.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?      

In my view, there will be two technological advances that will take center stage in the coming years.

The first of these is the control and management of company agreements. Now, although it is true that the in-house legal areas keep all agreements in a digitised and orderly manner, given the volume of the documents, technological assistance is increasingly required to systematise the control of the agreements, in order to keep them in order, numbered, classified, with alerts of deadlines and terms, considerations, guarantees, and special clauses, among others. This management of agreements will not only alleviate the legal burden, but will also facilitate the tasks of administration, accounting, and human resources areas, among others.

The second of these is the monitoring of proceedings. We usually worked with charts that centralise all of the information of our cases. However, these charts had to be updated manually and were not always updated on a daily basis. This led to situations in which we were unaware of certain due dates and deadlines. In this sense, it is paramount to me to utilise software that allows us to constantly monitor all proceedings and alert us, at the precise moment, about any new developments in the case.

What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why? 

On many occasions it is thought that, in order to solve a problem or impasse (which cannot be avoided in a commercial or labour relationship), it is necessary to go directly to the judicial authority. Although this is the right of each person or company, sometimes a first friendly approach could work and thus save time, money and other resources.

In this sense, we have been presented with cases that could have been resolved amicably but that have come to be processed in a judicial proceeding, many times unjustifiably. For this reason, I believe that in the face of any issue that could cause a possible problem, the best solution is for the parties to seek a conciliation in order to reach an agreement that satisfies their interest. If this is not possible a judicial proceeding shall be commenced.