Belén de Moya entered the legal tech sector without a pre-planned strategy. Her career began in the world of advertising; she went on to do an MBA and work in management consultancy, before ending up at a law firm in a role that, until not too long ago, simply did not exist. She is not put off by this pioneering status; on the contrary, it is exactly what attracted her to it.
“My career hasn’t followed a straight path. I’ve moved around a bit, guided by intuition and curiosity,” she says. She studied Advertising and started out as an Account Executive – a management role from day one. When the sector no longer challenged her, she did an MBA to gain a broader business perspective, which opened the doors to consultancy and, with it, to technology projects that sparked her interest in technology.
“The legal side was something completely unknown to me – neither good, nor bad, nor average. And that’s precisely what appealed to me: starting something from scratch. I was really drawn to the idea that lawfirms didn’t have purely managerial roles.”
Salar de Uyuni Looking after the team, from the most practical matters to the most abstract
Today, as Operations Director of the Legal Tech division, Belén does not manage projects directly – that is the responsibility of senior staff – but she is responsible for ensuring the entire team has everything it needs to carry them out: an understanding of the client, clear planning with defined deliverables, and the budget available to execute them.
This also includes each person’s career plan and training programme. What does a technician who has just started need in order to become, over the years, a technical lead in a department? Mapping out that path, identifying the milestones and supporting them along the way is, for her, an essential part of the job.
“In reality, my job is to look after the team. To ensure they have everything they need for the project to succeed, from the most practical matters to the most abstract.”
Listening rather than leading
If you ask her what drives her day-to-day work, the answer is simple: ensuring the team is doing well. “That we, as the department’s management, support them so they can be the best professionals they can be. That each person can develop in the way they wish to,” she explains. A developer and a business analyst with a background in law may have very different career paths, and for Belén, the important thing is that each person grows in line with the firm’s values, but within their own capabilities and ambitions.
When asked about the skill that cannot be learnt from a master’s degree but has been crucial to her work, she is clear: the ability to listen. Not just to the team, but to what the client needs – something they often do not express directly, or may not even be fully aware of themselves.
“There’s an aspect that I believe is very closely linked to intuition. And intuition, in reality, is fuelled by experience. Often you reflect on your own experiences and say: ‘I’ve been through this before on other projects; it’s not exactly the same situation, but we could end up in the same place.’”
Family celebration Authenticity, diversity and development
This is how Belén sums up ECIJA’s culture in three words. “Authenticity because here you can be yourself. Diversity because the company is broad and flexible enough to accommodate very different people and ways of working. And development because there is a real drive, an ambition to become better professionals every day,” she says.
A ‘naive’ ambition on a larger scale
When asked where she sees herself in ten years’ time, Belén isn’t looking to reinvent herself: she’d like to be doing what she does now, but on a larger scale. When she joined ECIJA, she had an ambition – which she herself describes as “naive” – that management should not be confined solely to Legal Tech projects, but that there would eventually be layers of management across all the firm’s practice areas.
“When I joined here, I had an ambition that I call ‘naive’: that management wouldn’t be confined solely to Legal Tech projects, but that there would eventually be layers of management across all the firm’s practice areas.”
If, as Chief Operating Officer, she manages to establish a practical and scalable methodology, her dream is simply to extend it to the whole firm, supporting the people who implement it in each practice area. And to do so from here.