Ruth Breitenfeld: “The in-house lawyer is an enabler, not a stopper”
After more than three decades as an in-house lawyer, the now former vice-president of Moeve Portugal analyzes the journey of a career marked by strategy, ethics and legal transformation from within the firm
by julia gil
With more than 35 years of experience in the legal world, Ruth Breitenfeld recently retired as vice president of Moeve Portugal (formerly Cepsa Portugal) and director of legal affairs at Moeve Trading Spain, leaving behind a career forged between Lisbon and Madrid, with extensive contact with Brussels and London. A lawyer by training and vocation, who defines herself as a ‘bridge builder’, her career can be divided into three main stages: the law firm, the in-house world at BP, and the move to Moeve, where she ended up leading the legal department for trading in Spain and finally becoming vicepresident of the Portuguese subsidiary
THE BEGINNINGS: CURIOSITY AND VOCATION
Born in Angola, her life took an early turn due to the civil war. Her family moved to Namibia and later to São Paulo, Brazil. It was there that, at the age of 15, a professor of human rights awakened her interest in law as an instrument for social improvement. Years later, when she settled in Lisbon, she completed her law studies at the Classical University of Lisbon. “I was enthusiastic about seeing law as a tool to do
good, that is, to improve things,” she admits. From the beginning, he combined his legal training with internships in law firms and other occupations: “In the fourth year of my degree, I looked for a lawyer with whom I could start working at that time without earning anything, in other words, just to see what the world of law was like from the inside,” he recalls.
From there, he moved on to a small boutique consulting firm that only worked with foreign investment, where they needed to create an in-house legal counsel. It was her command of languages that led her to accept this challenge. Years later, her specialisation in Community law (postgraduate degree from the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University) — driven by the integration of Spain and Portugal into the European Union — led her to work, from Lisbon, with the first Portuguese lawyer specialising in Community law and the first to have an office in Brussels.
BP PORTUGAL: A CROSS-CUTTING APPRENTICESHIP
After four years, she joined BP Portugal as an in-house lawyer, at a time when this role was not yet fully recognized. “They asked me if I was there because I wasn’t good enough for a law firm. I laughed. For me, being in-house was the most challenging thing.”
For almost 15 years, Breitenfeld encountered an environment of constant growth and change: mergers, acquisitions and international projects. “It was an impressive school,” he explains. Moreover, it was also the place where he consolidated his vision of the legal role: “No matter how much you know about law, if you don’t understand what the needs and concerns of the person who is your client are, or if you don’t understand their business, you can make a technically perfect document, but it’s wet paper,” he admits.
THE BIG LEAP TO MOEVE
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