Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/103643
Are there areas of legislation or new regulations you believe will bring added challenges to your department in 2013? A nti-bribery/anti-corruption compliance is a big issue for us. We have spent a tremendous amount of time developing a compliance program. We will be doing more training in this area this year. Just because we're a Canadian company doesn't mean we're not going to be dealing with vendors or people who are international or U.S.-based. Next year we will probably train every single business unit on this issue. Privacy and maintaining confidentiality for our clients is also a priority so that means training our people around what a confidentiality agreement really means. Is your organization exploring opportunities to expand business internationally or domestically? I envision next year being incredibly robust based on some of the things the corporation is considering. We are primarily operating in Canada and we do have some U.S operations but we are going to be really focusing on the domestic market and there's a reason for that. Canada has an abundance of opportunities — just look at Nexen and CNOOC. There are some major opportunities in this country. I think what you're seeing is a lot of foreign investment in oil and gas and a lot of foreign engineering companies are here now. They have come to the Calgary market in the last couple of years when the market has been turned down and they're establishing themselves because they see the oil sands continuing to be a vibrant market. Those engineering companies are starting to build an expertise here quietly. We see there will be a large trend of foreign companies coming in and we want to capture and retain that market share. How do you see the in-house role evolving as you take on more complex work this year? It changes as we've gotten more exposure to the business units. It used to be I'd take on a lot but now we train the business units to understand they're ultimately accountable and I'm just providing advice. What I say is if you don't take the advice and something goes wrong I will be turning to you and saying I need to deal with this and you're going to be paying for the legal costs incurred. We're going to be docketing our work next year and identifying every hour we're spending on matters. I think it helps people understand exactly how much something costs. I think one of the things we're trying to do more is get estimates in advance so you can provide internal clients with as much information as possible. We're all on the same team and if I don't get good service you're going to hear about it. I've been incredibly blunt when I'm unhappy with service. Jane Fedoretz Vice president and general counsel CEDA International Corp. Calgary SANDRA STRANGEMORE Do you use secondments from external firms to assist with additional work or have you considered it? No. I've done it in a previous job and I don't see the value of it — it's very expensive. You may try and get a reduced rate but you're just teaching a person how to be an expert. They learn a lot from you and they can be very helpful in a crunch time but I've found you spend a lot of time mentoring. Most of our work is a situation where I need five hours of time or a month of time — our practice is so varied. Our internal clients want to know who is in the department and I'd rather give that work to my own people to do. w w w. c a n a d i a n law y er m a g . c o m / i n h o u s e February 2013 • 21