The events of October 18, 2019, and the following weeks in Chile have most unequivocally put legal operations at ALTO to the test. Our legal team had to come up with remote work ways and methodologies to ensure operational continuity.

Thus, this experience that prevented our daily work routine, among others, sped up even more the digital transformation process that were undergoing. In fact, I would dare say that it was right then when the legal area actually began to live the #Connected experience.

On that occasion and when the Government authorities announced Phase‑4 of the COVID‑19 outbreak, the question arose on how to ensure that strategic criminal prosecution continued. This was indubitably not an easy task, and was made possible thanks to the support of the ALTO multidisciplinary teams, as well as the business model change that we had started two years ago, with a clear focus on operational efficiency by using technology.

I never doubted that it was possible to coordinate the legal team for them to continue their work remotely. However, meeting the challenge required us to strictly take the following steps:

• Team Sensitization: Explaining the need for, and importance of, adopting special measures to adjust operations, while promoting the commitment and responsibility of every team member;
• Objective Redesign: In the understanding that court proceedings would be different due the health emergency, developing objectives that adjusted to this new reality, based on digital transformation;
• Roadmap Definition: Designing a strategic action plan that combined and specified methods and technologies, directions for use and responsible persons, and
• Continuous Improvement: Continuously analyzing and improving processes, measuring results, correcting mistakes and detecting opportunities for improvement.

In what regards legal operations as such, and particularly the strategic criminal prosecution based on Smart Data, the ALTO Alliance platform has been essential, since it enables us to be connected with our clients in real time by integrating information from operational and criminal event reports, all in one place. Connected from different parts of Chile, our legal team can use this help to take legal action in respect of the prosecution of criminal events, identify patterns, classify crime as common or strategic, and include information on accused relapse for each event, as well as on whether these individuals belong to any differentiated control groups, so as to focalize crime prosecution and get better results. It is at this point that a massive data analysis using the ALTO Alliance platform can help the team of lawyers make decisions.

Apart from ALTO Alliance, the ALTO legal team added various technological support tools to their work methodology, so as to ensure service continuity. Some of these are: Google Hangouts Meet, Zoom, Trello, the virtual office of the judicial branch, mi.FISCALIA/en línea [on‑line district attorney’s office], among others. Thanks to these platforms, we have been able to attend the various daily district, criminal‑oral‑trial and appellate court hearings every day by videoconference.  We have also been able to keep processing documents at the Public Prosecutor’s Office and coordinating investigation procedures with police bodies through the use of telematics, while continuously putting our legal team to the test of assessing the efficiency and legal convenience of using one or another of the available means, so as to continue making progress in our cooperation with the criminal justice system as an active party (plaintiff).