Legal managers from PepsiCo, IBM, Bayer, Uber, Xiaomi and other leading companies share best practices at Foro Gerencias Legales

The second edition of the Foro Gerencias Legales, organised by Gericó Associates, brought together more than 100 attendees on Thursday 18 April at the Deloitte Centre of Excellence in Bogotá (Colombia). An event in which trends and best practices in the world of legal management were discussed.

After a welcome from Gericó Associates Managing Partner Marc Gericó, panel 1 began, focusing on the challenges that legal managers are facing in 2024. Participants included Ángela Ruiz de Somocurcio, legal and compliance and permits manager at Marcobre; Cynthia Herrera, legal manager for projects, business and compliance at Urbanova Inmobiliaria – Breca Group; José Alejandro Torres, partner at Posse Herrera Ruiz; Leonardo Berrío Chamorro, head of the Legal Department at Refinería de Cartagena; and Daniel Linares, founding partner at Linares Abogados, as moderator.

‘What the legal manager values most is responsiveness, being there 24/7, immediacy,’ said José Alejandro Torres, partner at Posse Herrera Ruiz, who stressed that another key is ’building trust, but not only within the organisation but also with the authorities, suppliers and strategic partners. That is the basis for generating any lasting relationship’. Leonardo Berrío Chamorro, head of the Cartagena refinery’s legal department, said that ‘it has always been said that the in-house lawyer is there to manage legal risk, but that definition pigeonholes you. What we do in our planning is to integrate ourselves into the company’s strategy’. He added that ‘our obligation is one of means, not results’.

‘For me, the communications area, both external and internal communication, is a total ally of the legal management,’ added Ángela Ruiz de Somocurcio, legal and compliance and permits manager at Marcobre, who stated that “everything has to be easily and quickly understood, and sometimes we do not have, at least in the legal areas, the sufficient skills that the communications areas have”. Cynthia Herrera, legal manager for projects, business and compliance at Urbanova Inmobiliaria – Breca Group, stressed that in terms of risk, it is key to put together a compliance programme to implement in the day-to-day running of the organisation, as it is something that impacts on business results.

Implementation of new technologies: LegalTech and artificial intelligence

Panel 2, focused on the implementation of new technologies such as LegalTech and artificial intelligence, was attended by Erick Castellanos, Senior Legal Advisor at Ecopetrol; Juliana Velásquez, Legal Business Partner Andean, Central America and Caribbean Countries (PACA) at Bayer; Narciso Lema, Technical Community Leader for Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia & LCR at IBM; Rafael López, Regional Head of Legal and Compliance Latam Xiaomi Technology; and María Cristina Rosales Del Prado, Special Legal Consultant at McDermott Will & Emery, as moderator.

‘Globally, the United States and Europe are setting the pace with regard to many guidelines on compliance and we are adapting them. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe is already very institutionalised. We are bringing it to Latin America, but within this region it is not the same sanction that you have for issues, for example, of compliance with personal data held by individuals in Mexico, Colombia or Peru’, explained Rafael López, Regional Head of Legal and Compliance Latam Xiaomi Technology.

For his part, Narciso Lema, Technical Community Leader for Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia & LCR at IBM, pointed out that where more development is needed is in the security of personal data privacy and in preventing new technologies that apply artificial intelligence from being biased: ‘It is in these types of questions that I think you should put pressure on us partners to be better at giving you the legality solutions you need’.

Erick Castellanos, Senior Legal Advisor at Ecopetrol, stressed that ‘the key point is what are the skills that we need to promote. I want to convey three: first, this is not a competition, this is a journey; second, do it with purpose; and third, do it as a team’. Juliana Velásquez, Legal Business Partner Andean, Central America and Caribbean Countries (PACA) at Bayer, said of new technologies, such as LegalTech and artificial intelligence, that ‘the first thing is to understand that this is here to stay. So, willingly or a little bit forced, but that message has to be transmitted’. In this sense, he stressed that it is key to transmit culture and confidence to the teams: ‘This is not technology for technology’s sake, I want to solve a problem and I need people to understand what that problem is, because this can help them’.

After the coffee break, the experts’ analysis focused on the topic ’Cross-border work: Regional integration in international companies’, with the participation of Carlos Felipe Payán, Corporate Legal Manager for the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico at Avaya; Juan Pablo Restrepo, Former Chief Counsel Andean, Pacific and Central American Countries at Mondelēz International; Lisa Richman, partner at McDermott Will & Emery (Washington, DC); Mariateresa Castro, Regional Legal & Compliance Manager (Chile, Colombia and Peru) at Coney Park; Nelly Zegarra, Legal Director for Colombia and Venezuela at PepsiCo and Enrique de Marchena, partner DMK Abogados, as moderator.

Nelly Zegarra, legal director for Colombia and Venezuela at PepsiCo, said that ‘organisations are ultimately a reflection of the market in which they operate. I think lawyers can be much more visionary in understanding that there is a lot of work to be done in these integrated and dynamic commercial relationships, such as tax planning, tax benefits offered by each country, regulatory issues, etc.’.

Juan Pablo Restrepo, Former Chief Counsel Andean, Pacific and Central American Countries of Mondelēz International, said that the issue of legal compliance is undergoing a very important development. In this regard, he said ‘our job as legal managers is to be a business partner in the transactions that we handle in the region and to look for solutions to the problems that may arise’. Mariateresa Castro, Regional Legal & Compliance Manager (Chile, Colombia and Peru) of Coney Park, highlighted in her speech that ‘the legal area has the function of identifying the challenges or non-compliances that we may have in the future and work on them in a preventive manner’.

Finally, Carlos Felipe Payán, corporate legal manager for the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico at Avay, mentioned that companies with a global presence should seek standardisation at all corporate levels and that ‘this implies looking for cross-border data flow enablers… and adapting our global policies to meet local requirements’.

Value-adding contracts as a route to conflict resolution

The sessions continued, after the lunch break, with the debate on ‘Value-adding contracts as a route to conflict resolution’, with experts Alejandra Gómez.

Legal Environment and Litigation Manager at OCENSA; Guillermo Cáez, partner at Deloitte Legal; Juan Pablo Philippi, partner FK Economics; María Ximena Guzmán, Litigation Counsel (Central America, Andean and Caribbean) at UBER; Gustavo Piedrahita, director of the Arbitration and Conciliation Centre of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce and Felipe Nazar, partner at Pérez-Llorca New York, as moderator.

María Ximena Guzmán, Counsel for Litigation (Central America, Andean and Caribbean) at UBER, said: ‘Nowadays, the clearer and simpler the contracts are, the better tools they will be for conflict resolution’. On the other hand, he commented that it is important to understand the culture: ‘The role of the local regional lawyer is to understand very well what can and cannot be done at the matrix level’. In her speech, Alejandra Gómez, legal manager of the Environment and Litigation of OCENSA, spoke about the need to have a good relationship with the internal client and also with the external proxy for the construction of a contract: ‘Building an effective relationship with the other areas and identifying the company’s need in a project will be key to define the clauses’. For his part, Gustavo Piedrahita, director of the Arbitration and Conciliation Centre of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, shared with the attendees that the Centre has a measurement programme in schools to teach children in the classroom that conflicts are resolved by talking: ‘We use a methodology called HERMES so that children of all ages learn to resolve their conflicts’, he emphasised.

Likewise, Guillermo Cáez, partner at Deloitte Legal, shared some real statistical data obtained in a survey, in which 50% of respondents said that smart contracts are much more efficient and faster to execute ‘as they are based on artificial intelligence and blockchain algorithms that automatically execute each of the contractual clauses of the parties’. For his part, Juan Pablo Philippi, partner FK Economics, said that ‘contracts are living documents and no matter how much they are kept in the drawer, they are being executed’. For this reason, he mentioned that uncertainty should be incorporated into contracts in such a way that they are flexible enough to adapt, but also specific enough to try to minimise the room for interpretation, which is ultimately what leads to a dispute.

Subsequently, in panel 5, ‘Legal Operations: Management of Legal Departments supported by metrics, indicators (KPIs) and efficient processes’, participated Álvaro José Tovar, Legal Counsel Contracts of Comcel-Claro and GC PowerList Colombia in The Legal 500 2022-2023; Carlos Gómez de la Torre, corporate legal manager and compliance officer of Real Plaza; Juan Germán Osorio, managing partner of Deloitte Legal; Miguel Ángel Raygada, manager of the Legal Division and General Secretariat and secretary of the Board of Directors of Banco GNB; Roger Guevara, founding partner of Alta Legal; and Fénix Vidal, lawyer at Sinerlex, as moderator.

‘We have to see how the KPIs have to evolve to really measure what I want over time,’ said Juan Germán Osorio, managing partner of Deloitte Legal, and reinforced the idea that these indicators allow us to see precisely what is not being visualised at that moment and that there are more things to learn and know. In this sense, he pointed out that ‘feeling measured is a challenge for this and all businesses’. For his part, Carlos Gómez de la Torre, corporate legal manager and compliance officer at Real Plaza, recommended that ‘when designing KPIs, we should not try to do it ourselves as lawyers; we should turn to the finance department to help us decide what we want to measure, why we want to measure it and what we want to measure it for, because if it is not aligned with the business strategy, nobody will benefit from what we are measuring… We have to present actionable information that allows us to make decisions as legal experts’.

Likewise, Miguel Ángel Raygada, manager of the Legal Division and the General Secretariat and secretary of the Board of Directors of Banco GNB, argued that ‘it is important to see the legal area not only as a unit of expenditure, but also as a unit of contribution’. He concluded by emphasising that, given that each sector and company has its own reality, the indicators that are established in the legal areas have to respond to this: ‘It must be a reactive business support area; we must focus on being more on top of things’, emphasised Álvaro José Tovar, Legal Counsel Contracts at Comcel-Claro. Roger Guevara, founding partner of Alta Legal, offered a practical recommendation to the attendees: ‘You, as in-house lawyers, have to know what is going to be internal control and what is going to be with external support’.

The role of legal management in sustainability

The day ended with the panel on ‘ESG: The role of legal management in sustainability’, with the intervention of Carlos Andrés Bonilla, legal vice-president for Colombia and Peru of Cemex; Catalina Ceballos, in charge of Legal Management of Entorno Ecopetrol; Daniella Ponce, Chief Compliance Officer of Prosegur; Silvana Pérez, Chief Compliance Officer of Grupo Centenario and Raúl Guevara, partner of ALTA Legal, as moderator.

Before the panel presentation, the moderator Raúl Guevara, partner at ALTA Legal, said that ‘the ESG issue comes from risk management from the environmental, social and governance point of view, to which other aspects have been added’. In this sense, Catalina Ceballos, head of Legal Management at Entorno Ecopetrol, remarked that her company has ‘a robust strategy that is supported by four fundamental pillars: competitive returns, energy transition, cutting-edge knowledge and “sosTECnibilidad”, which is the way in which the social, environmental and governance aspects are strengthened through technological solutions’. Daniella Ponce, Chief Compliance Officer of Prosegur, commented that her organisation has integrated the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into its current strategy ‘which is based on 4 pillars: ethics, transparency and governance; the environment; the well-being of people and security’.

‘We demonstrate that sustainability is not a trend, but a reality: the company that does not focus on these issues is destined to disappear,’ stressed Carlos Andrés Bonilla, legal vice-president for Colombia and Peru at Cemex. In this context, he explained how they devised an internal campaign at a global level and adapted to each jurisdiction called ‘Future in Action’, with which they have managed to accelerate the reduction of their CO2 emissions. Finally, Silvana Pérez, Chief Compliance Officer of Grupo Centenario, said that ‘the main challenge is the changing nature of the regulatory aspect and maintaining the level of stakeholder satisfaction’. She also explained that acting together with strategic partners is a good option to contribute to more efficient sustainability initiatives.

The day ended with closing remarks by Marc Gericó, Managing Partner of Gericó Associates. This edition was sponsored by Deloitte Legal, Posse Herrera Ruiz, Pérez-Llorca, McDermott Will & Emery, Alta, Linares Abogados, FK Economics, DMK Abogados, Sinerlex, Baxel Consultores, Omni Bridgeway, Olarte Moure & Asociados, Aguado & Ruiz Abogados, FTI Consulting and Lexsoft Systems. It has also received institutional support from the Arbitration and Conciliation Centre (Centro de Arbitraje y Conciliación) of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce. Time Manager, Abogado Digital, Alianza Latinoamericana para la Innovación Legal have collaborated as allied brands.