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?

In times of instability and crisis, it is important to focus on maintaining a culture of ethics and compliance; remain proactively flexible; measure the company’s risk exposure with a long-term management perspective; and emphasise fluid communication between the different departments of the company. This is how I would approach the challenge:

Maintain a culture of ethics and compliance. In times of crisis, it is a priority to reduce the burden of fines and penalties that the company receives, to use that money for productive purposes. Likewise, insisting on compliance with internal company policies by employees reduces the risk of fines. Taking care of the company’s finances and reputation ensures its resilience.

Flexibility and proactive adaptation: periods of instability tend to involve high regulatory production, where both legislators and agencies are very active in changing the regulatory environment. It is important for the company’s resilience that legal management is a reliable source of information on changes in the regulatory environment that impact the company and how they should be addressed. To this end, legal management must be adequately and proactively informed.

Measuring risk with a long-term view. A thorough analysis of the risks to which the company is exposed, and its vulnerabilities is important, including regulatory duties, contractual obligations, exposure to sanctions or litigation, and reputational impact. The company’s resilience is ensured to the extent that this analysis seeks to cover not only the current crisis, but to outline a plan of action for future crises as well.

Fluid communication with the rest of the company. Times of crisis require quick decision-making. To minimise the risk of making the wrong decisions, it is important that all company officials who must give their opinion and feedback on the decision are aware of it, necessitating a proper flow of information.

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?

Artificial intelligence (AI), especially in automated document review, blockchain, and smart contracts remain one of the most profound technological advancements in the legal industry. AI and blockchain technology have been gaining ground in the legal industry in recent years. Smart contracts are used in many forms, from tokenised prediction markets and initial coin offerings to service level agreements such as insurance contracts, performance bonds and more. Additionally, it is important to note that it is now a common practice for law firms and legal departments to manage their information using contract life cycle management software.

In my opinion, all these advancements are very powerful tools for legal professionals, tools which share the common goal of allowing legal practitioners to save time spent on routine activities and focus their attention on decision making and other matters where they generate real added value. However, like any other tools, these technologies still need a human hand to handle them properly. To keep updated, lawyers need to rethink the set of abilities they require to maintain the pace. Legal skills such as clarity of language and the ability to convey ideas concisely will help lawyers to lead the use of these technologies into productive outcomes.