Team size: Eight

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?

An in-house legal team represents one of the most strategic consultants to an organisation, and hence, during periods of instability, the legal team is an essential part of any decision-making process, being able to adapt and react to any request from the organisation during such periods.

Our services must include our ability as in-house counsel to detect any legal risk during this process, offering the organisation efficient and effective legal solutions, based not only on a suitable application of the law but also considering our specialised knowledge of the business and applicable internal policies.

The legal team must also be able to adapt and adjust any legal advice considering the changes that the organisation must overcome during these processes. Hence, we must be resilient as a team to work through any changes and adapt our analysis and advice to the requirements of the organisation.

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?

In-house legal teams must be able to adapt their processes in accordance with available technologies in order to provide more efficient responses and solutions. Legal technologies are not supposed to replace legal practice but to serve such practices by providing greater efficiency in legal investigations, contract automatization, and e-discovery, among others. As legal in-house counsel, we must be able to adapt and use these new tools in our daily work.

In your opinion, what are the main trends that are salient in your country currently?

Peru, as an emerging country, has overcome several challenges, including corruption, money laundering, and terrorism crises. As a result (and this is a trend for Latin American countries), the Peruvian Congress has passed important regulations requiring legal entities to implement and operationalise compliance programmes to prevent and reduce their exposure to these types of crimes.

For this purpose, in-house counsel is being involved in the process of creating and implementing compliance programmes, collaborating with all areas of the organisation to develop tailor-made training programmes and monitoring plans. Recent legal regulations, including other crimes such as tax fraud and archaeological violations, have shown that the list of crimes is increasing, and that compliance programmes and related policies are ‘living’ documents.

In-house counsel needs to align itself with this trend and demonstrate the ability to adapt to changes and challenges, including our ability to raise awareness in other areas of the organisation. The objective must always be to have a very well-implemented and robust compliance programme, not only on paper but also included as a daily guide for the execution of all the organisation’s operations.