Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT Stitching it together The work done by in-house counsel to support practitioners within the health-care indus- try can often mimic the emergency room in terms of triaging and determining priorities. Life as an in-house counsel in the health-care industry is fast paced and there's never a shortage of interesting issues that pop up in any given day. By Helen Burnett C hanging models of delivery, an ever-evolving regula- tory environment, and a workplace that can at times be as fast paced as the emergency room itself has in-house counsel working in the health-care industry never knowing what to expect when they arrive at the offi ce. With many similarities to the fi eld of medicine, general coun- sel for hospitals and health-care facilities are working in a devel- oping area where lawyers say they often get to be on the cutting edge but receive little in the way of a template or precedent. "It's constantly evolving, and every day, even some of the nights too, bring new challenges, and that's something that I think it takes a particular type of lawyer to thrive on that instead of being crushed by it," says David Weyant, vice president and general counsel for the Calgary Health Region — an immense, publicly funded network of 12 hospitals, 41 care centres, and 29,000 employees serving a population of more than 1.2 mil- lion. Given the size of the Calgary Health Region, the organization requires a large in-house legal department to handle the range of issues at hand, including two clinical support counsel, fi ve lawyers doing contract work, and others working on privacy law, labour and employment, construction, development and planning law, and an in-house litigator. The variety of work in this area is something agreed upon by all counsel. In the health-care industry as a whole, lawyers are dealing with much more than emergencies and issues related to medicine. Indeed, counsel tell InHouse that in this fi eld, they are of- ten handling nearly every area of the law imaginable, includ- ing contracts, pensions, and intellectual property, which keeps them busy, and has its rewards. "There's never a shortage . . . of interesting issues in this role. Never. I wake up in the morning and I just never know what's going to be hitting my desk that day," says Alan Belaiche, general counsel at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. While counsel add a lot of value to the health-care environ- ment, it is always a question of "where do you get involved," and where is it appropriate and most effective, he says. C ANADIAN Lawyer INHOUSE FEBRU AR Y 2008 39