Could you tell us a bit about your significant successes in your role?

Being an in-house legal counsel requires a hands-on approach to legal questions applicable to the organisation, which will require a clear ability to identify and mitigate risk, and to advise the business side on practical courses of action that take that risk into account. This is only possible with a deep knowledge about the activity of the company, while ‘keeping it real’ with other colleagues from other departments, with no legal background (too much legal jargon is not recommended)!

Since the early start of my in-house career, I believe that I have focused on these priorities which are, ultimately, my big achievements: Providing the best practical and business-oriented legal advice, having an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the business’ strategic drivers and goals and building strong internal relationships, based on honest, two-way communication.

In your opinion, what are the qualities and skills needed to form a strong legal team?

Firstly, a strong legal team has to possess good and solid legal expertise, to be able to provide the best practical legal advice the organisation demands and requires. But this is not enough. A legal team must have a cross functional alignment with the strategic and operational vision of the company, build strong relationships through an open communication and honest feedback, be innovators by working hard to continuously improve and think outside “the legal box”, resourceful and results driven.

What is the biggest risk to your industry and how are you contributing to prepare your organisation for this?

The current geopolitical and economic situation has a huge impact across all industries. For the retail sector, supply chain issues such as the increasing cost of energy, materials, logistics and shipping strike a serious threat to the retail competitiveness. On the other hand, the digital threat, namely derived by cyberattacks, also puts at risk the resilience and integrity of the sector, due to its vast attack surface and the growing complexity around securing sensitive data.

In this demanding scenario, my mission is to keep contributing by providing faster and more efficient ways to achieve the strategic and operational plans of the business. This only can be done by providing the most updated and innovative legal assessment and working with legal operations models to make better decisions based on data.

What challenges have you overcome to get to the position you are in today?

When I first started working in an in-house legal counsel, the legal function had a reputation of creating blockages with no added value of any kind. Since then, I have been working hard on proving that the legal function can be trusted and a valuable arm in the company, by helping and driving the business forward. This urged me to have a commercially focused and pragmatic approach, overcoming the huge obstacle for any legal counsel: presenting clear and concise legal advice that does not compromise on a fulsome explanation of the legal issue in question.