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?  

Going back to my Civil Defense Duty Service, our main activity was to identify human and natural causes of disasters: from unrests to floods, we worked on a series of hypothetical scenarios and set up intervention procedures on how to deploy or intervene to save as many lives as possible. We had very developed and complex procedures in place to meet almost all crisis situations, with this simple, critical and fundamental objective: How to best save lives. 

Legal aspects tend to impact all sectors of my company and, in general, my economic sector (banking). That is why, in my business activities, I tend to follow the same approach: 1) Identify the risks, their nature or their source; 2) identify their impact on my activities; 3) find out, based on my available resources, how to handle these risks; 4) take any action to mitigate the risks and if not possible, find the best way to limit the impact; 5) set up a follow-up process to ensure the best possible way to monitor my actions and allow me to immediately take any corrective action if needed, and; 6) set up a strong reporting process to ensure all persons and departments receive all the information they need in form they need. 

Needless to say, a trustful and respectful relationship with all relevant persons and departments is also key. It is so easy to kill a project by involving non-respectful or toxic people. 

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?     

ChatGPT is a revolution… But like Janus, it has two faces. Yes, it can definitively assist you in drafting or writing legal documents, but on the other hand, you may end up relying too heavily on the automation and lose these drafting skills over time.