16 www.canadianlawyermag.com
SPECIAL REPORT
CORPORATE COUNSEL SURVEY
Building relationships with
corporate counsel in the
time of COVID-19
Canadian Lawyer survey shows changes in external spend grew
with need for pandemic-related expertise, writes Zena Olijnyk
IN A YEAR that has been unlike any that
law firms have experienced in recent memory,
thanks to COVID-19, Canadian law firms saw
their general counsel clients rely on them
more than ever to get the specific information
they needed to deal with the pandemic.
Canadian Lawyer's sixth annual corporate
counsel survey indicates clearly how in-house
counsel needed expertise from the firms they
have regularly used to walk them through
pandemic minefields — everything from
employment and labour law to cybersecurity.
As Cheryl Satin, a partner with Blake
Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto, says:
"There was a sense of urgency in the early
stage, much of it related to questions that
needed a higher level of expertise to answer."
This need for outside legal knowledge
related to the pandemic shows up in the
survey in answers to questions about in-house
legal spending on external legal services.
When respondents were asked about
the amount of money that their in-house
departments spent on external legal counsel
in 2020, most categories saw an increase in
spending from the previous fiscal year.
The percentage of departments spending
