Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/1171384
www.canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse 21 2018, the legal operations team wrote a new conflict of interest policy, developed a code of conduct for members of the adjudicative bodies, worked to map and develop the business processes and collaborated with the IT depart- ment. City solicitor Wendy Walberg says a number of the city's legal experts assisted with the work. "There was a lot of legal advice provided from various people as well. We certainly had our prosecution's unit involved. There were also lawyers from other groups who provided advice: our transportation lawyer, our information privacy lawyer. There are a lot of administrative law concepts also that come into play here and people had to look at that, as well as good governance issues." Beyond the legal challenges, the team working on the project needed to consider IT issues, an experience that was new to the lawyers involved. Chapman explains, for example, that they needed to figure out how to "open up our portals to not only allow us to send out information but to allow the public to send us information that we weren't in control of. So that was one significant IT issue that we had to work on with our IT people. It required a commitment both from us and from them to find a solution." The experience turned out to be a positive one and she hopes to repeat it. "This is the first project of significance that we have worked on with IT. But it has opened our eyes to various opportunities. And we're currently working on additional projects." It is easy to say the APS has been a measurable success. In its first year of operations, it was responsible for more than $2.5 million in gross operating budget savings. In total, 11.3 per cent of motorists issued a ticket requested online screening reviews compared with 4.1 per cent requesting in-person reviews. Chapman says those numbers are a bit higher than under the former court system, but that's a good thing. "I attribute that to the barriers being removed for people dealing with their disputes. I look at that as a success — that more people, if they have an issue, are able to access the system and put that dispute forward to the city." It has also been a boost for the morale of the lawyers involved in creating APS and the people who are administering it. "People might initially be reluctant to change because nobody really knows what it means for them, but people really enjoy being part of a successful project like this, and people have embraced the change. The people who work in this unit — our administrative penalty unit — are very happy. That's very important to me and I know it's very important to Chapman. "Also, any project like this is about teamwork: teamwork to get it rolling, teamwork to sell it and there was a tremendous amount of teamwork within the legal services division to get it going and get it implemented," say Walberg. According to Chapman, APS has also garnered the attention of people in other cities who are interested in coming to see the system and learning from Toronto's example. That attention marks the project a success in her books, especially since many of those same people initially expressed doubts that a system like this would even work. Empowering staff with knowledge Using knowledge management software helps staff search for answers to pertinent legal questions CATEGORY: Legal operations DEPARTMENT SIZE: small COMPANY: Ducks Unlimited Canada EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE clichés, the aphorisms that change is both inevitable and a constant are realities that every organization has to face, especially if it wants to have the ability to maintain institutional knowledge. Gary Goodwin, executive corporate secretary and counsel at Ducks Unlimited Canada, has seen what can happen when people leave em- ployers and projects and take their experience and expertise with them. It's not a situation he wants the not-for-profit habitat conservation or- ganization to undergo ever again, and he is taking steps to ensure knowledge is not just shared but organized. Goodwin, who describes his position as "a sole practitioner in a large, diverse organization," has introduced the use of knowledge manage- ment software to Ducks Unlimited. Specifically, he has taken advantage of two features that are part of the Microsoft Office 365 suite — Teams and MindMeister — to create and manage proj- ects and to give staff a way to search for and find answers to pertinent legal questions complete with contextual information. Teams is a chat-based workspace that allows members to communicate, collaborate and share documents. The MindMeister add-on is a mind-mapping data visualization tool that graphically links a central concept with related ideas and supporting documentation in a way that illustrates hierarchies and connections. "I find mind mapping very helpful to conceptu- alizing my ideas. Putting them into a visual format really helps disseminate those ideas to people that are unfamiliar with what's happening with respect to a particular project," says Goodwin. Gary Goodwin, executive corporate secretary and counsel