Canadian Lawyer InHouse

46 www.canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse DEPARTMENT PROFILE FAST FACTS: There are 19 people in the legal team at Siemens Canada Siemens has 14 production facilities across Canada Siemens Canada has an annual revenue of $3 billion The Siemens Canada legal department submitted 55 innovations in the Siemens Global Legal Innovation Challenge in 2017 Siemens has a global cybersecurity centre in New Brunswick AS MANY LEGAL departments face budget restraints, making use of new technology to improve efficiencies and reduce costs can be a powerful way to demonstrate the value of in-house counsel. With that in mind, Siemens Canada's legal department has focused on seeking out and implementing the latest tech and AI systems to enhance business objectives. "It really helps us create efficiencies within our group so we can spend more time on matters that have more risk or have more im- portance to the business," says Shawna-Leigh Moulton, director of governance and legal operations at Siemens. Among the many technology systems used successfully within the legal department, an e-billing system was recently adopted to consolidate all bills from law firms and to provide a central system for lawyers to approve invoices. "This enables us to see our total spend," says Moulton, who works closely with gen- eral counsel Richard Brait. "We can break it down in terms of which firms we are paying and what kind of discount we are getting from each firm and the type of work they did, so we get really good metrics that we bring to internal management to show the value of Latest tech, AI drive business Siemens' legal department joins forces with external counsel to pilot new technology and build efficiencies for the entire organization our outside counsel spend." Document management system iManage was recently rolled out to consolidate corre- spondence and allow the team to work more collaboratively by using a central repository for files. In addition, toolkits were created to provide a direct information line that can be accessed by all departments to answer legal questions, in order to reduce the number of emails sent to the legal team. Siemens' legal operations manager, Grant Jackman, created the toolkits to allow the team to spend more time on business and less on answering repeated questions. Technology is a major consideration when it comes to working with external counsel. Siemens will often leverage systems or participate in pilots that are being tested by its three primary law firm partners, to cut down on costs and maximize exposure to new systems. "Technology helps to determine which firm we would use for a specific project because some firms may be experts in one type of technology while other firms would be experts in another, so we are able to select based on our needs," says Jackman. "If they are piloting something, we will try to be part of that pilot and use some of our contract to try the sys-

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