Canadian Lawyer InHouse

MARCH/APRIL 2019 38 INHOUSE L a w D e p a r t m e n t M a n a g e m e n t JEAN-FRANCOIS DENIS recalls the fi rst time he asked for data from the legal department at Bombardier Inc. when he was trying to fi gure out what was being spent and how much work was being sent to ex- ternal law fi rms. "I received 10 boxes of paper invoices — it wasn't even possible to know what each fi rm charged us. I had to reverse engineer it and that is not uncommon — a lot of companies are like that," says Denis, who was senior counsel, litigation and legal operations at the multinational aerospace and transporta- tion company based in Montreal. He is now director of operations, legal affairs at SNC-Lavalin. "I'd rather pay in- house lawyers than suppliers, but in order to do that, you need to see where your op- portunities exist." Those opportunities are around fi nding out how much is spent on what matters and what repeatable tasks could be tackled bet- ter in-house or done on another arrange- ment basis externally and knowing what law fi rms are charging for certain matters compared to others. What Denis describes is but one impor- tant aspect of what legal operations takes in. Legal ops encompass a combination of disci- plines that includes knowledge management, technology management, fi nancial manage- ment, compliance, contract management, intellectual property management, external resource management, strategic planning, metrics and analysis. Both the Association of Corporate Counsel and Corporate Legal Operations Consortium have come up with lists of core competencies that help describe the maturity level of a legal ops department. While it's true that legal op- erations departments have been in place in large organizations such as the large banks and telecommunications companies for many years, the increased in- terest in the application of operations prac- tices to legal is thanks in part to the overall growth of in-house legal teams and a focus on the legal department performing more like other business units and increased pres- sure to show metrics on performance. But the fi rst step can be the hardest and that is to get your arms around the data, as Denis did. He was at Bombardier for 15 years before joining SNC-Lavalin, where there are 75 lawyers across fi ve continents. "There's a lot of horsepower here with a very talented team of lawyers that needed support," Denis says. At the beginning, he was the lone dedi- cated legal ops lawyer and now he has a per- son helping him with billing and invoicing and one full-time business analyst support- ing him. That person is not a lawyer and increasingly, legal operations team mem- bers are being hired not from legal but from other professions. Denis is past president of the ACC chap- ter in Quebec and is currently developing a conference for the chapter this coming Sep- tember in Montreal. He will be speaking about the key performance indicators that will allow in-house departments to evaluate the health of a department. "You need to speak the language of your C-suite. I can't believe that there are not more dedicated legal ops functions in Can- ada right now. We have some world class companies here. In terms of an increasing sophistication of departments coming up with sound, better reporting, it's a must." At Corus Entertainment the legal ops "team" was formed in late 2017 and consist- ed of Sara Chan, director, assistant general counsel, with the guidance of the general counsel setting the foundation for the strat- egy. "I still had a number of other matters I was responsible for. As of last month, we of- fi cially have a team of three who work on le- gal operations — myself, a legal operations manager who was just hired at the begin- ning of 2019 and a legal operations special- ist (who also has other responsibilities in the department). Our legal operations manager is 100 per cent dedicated to leading legal ops initiatives. I am the only licensed lawyer of the team," says Chan. The fi rst year at Corus was really focused on organizational design and ensuring the team was arranging themselves in a way that could best respond to the variety of business units they serve. "This year, our focus is primarily on ensuring that we work smarter and more effi ciently and fi nding the optimal mix of technology and process management Legal ops 101: Find your data It sounds like a complicated combination of competencies, but an effective legal operations team can help a legal department be more effi cient and a better service provider to its business units. BY JENNIFER BROWN cies that ty level of legal op- ve been in ons team t and a

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