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?

Firstly, during periods of instability or crises, the company must adapt all its internal procedures and working methods, including legal ones. In this sense, legal aspects must be handled according to the current situation and the needs of the company. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the company’s risks and what could eventually cause a risk or problem. This will help other areas of the company, such as the commercial area, technical area, operational area, among others, to be aware of the risks and prevent problems that may arise.

Another important issue is that, once the risks have been identified, it will be possible to optimise the resources of the legal area, resulting in savings in external consulting and time for the in-house lawyers.

On the other hand, as legal strategy is a fundamental part of the broader business strategy, it is imperative that the legal area understands the goals of the company to support all the areas involved, not only when a problem arises, but also from the beginning, and assist them until the closing of the business or before any need that may be required. In my opinion, it is essential that all legal departments not only solve problems but also anticipate and prevent them.

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 my view, there are two main tools that serve us today and will serve us much better in the future. First, a contract organisation software. Given the increase in agreements with customers, suppliers, and contractors, this tool will help us to identify all agreements in an orderly manner, taking into account the due date, obligations, important clauses, and guarantees, among others. In this way, not only can the legal department be aware of the company’s agreements, but so too can other business areas that need access to this information.

On the other hand, another relevant tool for the legal world is a legal case file tracking programme. In general, and even more so when a company has many judicial or administrative cases, we are not always aware of the dates of the hearings, deadlines for filing documents, among other things. Therefore, it is very important to have a tool that alerts us days before the expiration or scheduling of a hearing, and that can provide us with accurate information about the case.

Finally, I try to keep myself updated on the latest news in terms of programmes, software, and applications primarily through certain Peruvian websites that provide information on the progress being made in my country. Additionally, I follow several pages of law firms and companies abroad on professional social networks that have developed programmes collaborating with LegalTech.