Team size: Six

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 principle, I would like to inform you that I hold the position of legal head in the company AMG Auplata Mining Group Perú, which is a mining company that has a lot of potential and promising projections. In legal management, we do anything necessary to guarantee business continuity and anticipate any situation that may become a contingency or threat to that continuity and the normal development of the business. There is a lot of mapping and vision work.

In a period of crisis, as we are part of the legal area, we see an opportunity that will allow us to generate possible value in the face of a context or situation that has changed, prioritising as a team to show our outlook against the crisis, and in this way achieve early and effective solutions. Likewise, we seek to join together with other strategic areas that allow us to be synchronised and, at the same time, have further information about the crisis that the company is going through. For example, showing a specific case that I experienced, at the end of 2022 our country, Perú, went through a major social upheaval in various provinces of our country and with greater intensity in the southern region, related to protests over the advancement of the presidential election and closure of Congress of the Republic of Perú. This unwanted, unpredictable event harmed us in the delivery circuit on the route of the provinces of Arequipa y Cuzco, affecting our marketer of the mineral concentrates that support our mining business which are the ones that generate the capital to honour the payment committed to our suppliers and contractors as well as strategic partners. In this case, our legal strategy was to organise ourselves with the involved areas (sustainability, human resources, accounting, and finance) in order to identify the problems that each of these areas faced due to the crisis and thus address them as early as possible.

A legal level, the implementation of a catalogue of actions at the administrative, judicial, and constitutional level has allowed the strengthening of the mining business strategy, which to date remains in a scenario of sustained post-crisis production. This allows us to continue maintaining a good relationship with our strategic partners.

What measures has your company taken to embed sustainability practices into its core business operations, and how does the role of the general counsel contribute to driving and ensuring sustainable practices within the company?

In this regard, it is known that this is a challenge in the mining industry. On the one hand, reducing its environmental and social footprint on a large scale and producing sustainably to guarantee that the projects are not stopped for reasons unrelated to their operations. On the other hand, it seeks to gain the trust of the population and the government to show itself as a mining company suitable for tenders and verifications.

The AMG-Auplata company is no stranger to this position, which is why our latest sustainable project has been carried out with a strategic partner of the company, the “Echoccollo” peasant community because they are located in our area of direct social influence. For example, the market of “cushuro” is being strengthened, which is a lagoon alga with a lot of iron potential. This generates independent work in a sustainable way for the community members of the area because there is no type of pollution nor generation of waste.

Likewise, we are in the process of incorporating a lighting tower with solar energy, thus avoiding the use of traditional solutions such as diesel or fossil fuels, in that way reducing the carbon footprint of mining activity and making the use of technologies more efficient.

We have actively participated in the programs promoted by the Ministry of the Environment called “Great Business Green Crusade,” planting trees in the Arequipa and Cusco region, monitoring their development, and “Bring your WEEE” which promotes practice of solid waste recycling.

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?

The legal sector is immersed in an increasingly complex and interconnected world with very specialised aspects, so as legal professionals we must combine traditional legal services with the provision of new ways of providing advice and offering legal defence to companies that demand trust, efficiency, speed, and quality. In this context, I consider that the emerging technologies that will have the most significant impact on the legal profession in the near future are everything related to the information technologies, artificial intelligence or digital platforms that are materialising in an increasingly market more global and competitive. For example, automated artificial legal advice regarding legal issues that does not involve further in-depth analysis. However, since these are new, they generate uncertainty in society but also new legal needs that must be known to offer better legal services. Regarding updating ourselves on these developments, I constantly review all virtual platforms related to modern law. Likewise, I follow law magazines such as “Revista IUS” and, in the company, we have hired the company Net Lex who provide us a complete service regarding the intelligent automation of our documents, efficient integration, and data visualisation to resolve in the best way the challenges that our legal area faces.