How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Resilience, in countries such as Peru, is not an exceptional situation; on the contrary, it is part of everyday life, and it is relatively common that various events – many of them unforeseeable – can generate instability and crises of various kinds for the company. Given the above, legal management is aimed at preventing, as far as possible, undesired impacts of those events that in some way are likely to occur, for example, in the case of the construction of mining infrastructure, it is foreseeable that the relationship between the client and the communities in which they develop activities can generate effects that end up involving the contractor. Therefore, before these scenarios, the most important thing is to seek to instil basic legal concepts in the different areas of the company that can be used first-hand to understand the crisis situation and propose plans of action, without prejudice to requesting internal legal advice.

However, when certain risks do materialise, what is required is an intervention aimed at helping to mitigate the effects suffered, as far as possible and within the applicable legal framework, both in terms of cost and in terms of other legal effects that may subsequently arise.

The challenge of dealing with these situations on a day-to-day basis has an enriching effect, which is to avoid falling into a routine and to always seek to think “outside the box” in order to contribute to the solutions provided by the company.

What emerging technologies do you see as having the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future, and how do you stay updated on these developments?

At an operational level, it is already vox populi and the market has already responded to the need for the legal practice to incorporate the use of artificial intelligence tools in its day-to-day work, whether to save time, costs or, in general, to improve management. As this is a technological aspect that is constantly being developed and updated, the challenge faced by in-house counsel is to adapt and learn constantly, trying to keep pace with other areas of the company that by their nature or function are closer to new technologies.

However, at the legislative or regulatory level, it is a reality that the country is a little slower in absorbing and regulating this type of phenomena – or if it does so, it imports standards or systems from other countries with different realities – so that situations may arise in which there are legal vacuums due to a lack of or insufficient regulatory development. For all these reasons, the need to seek training in these matters is evident, although the supply is still limited, at least at the local level. All regulatory changes, especially those associated with new technologies, pose permanent challenges which, if they are not addressed, understood and adapted to the company’s daily operations, can lead to a decrease in its competitiveness.