Canadian Lawyer InHouse

lAW DEpARTMEnT MAnAGEMEnT FEELING THAT NEED TO CLONE YOURSELF? Small law departments are exploring options to getting some extra help when the workload spikes. By Jennifer Brown When Marianne Bolhuis landed at Diageo Canada Inc. as director and senior counsel for Canada she realized pretty quickly she would be handling all matters across the board — more than she anticipated, actually. She was building the legal function at the Canadian office of the premium drink company from the ground up, and at times it was a little daunting. But she didn't want to pull the trigger too quickly and involve external counsel at rates beyond her budget. As often happens in companies where there hasn't been a general counsel before they may not think there's more work than one lawyer can handle — but the person hired to be that first general counsel quickly discovers there may be work for five lawyers. While Bolhuis acknowledges there is "a time and a place for traditional law firms" what she really needed was someone like herself to handle the extra work. "Sometimes you really do need a very senior regulatory lawyer for five or 10 minutes to get a quick answer about something," she said, speaking in April at the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association's annual spring conference in Toronto on a panel called Innovation in Pricing Legal Services: Are General Counsel Overdue? "Getting additional head count approval is one of the hardest things to justify." Instead of sending the work out or calling a firm for a secondment, she considered her options and wondered if a contract lawyer might be the right answer. She approached Cognition LLP, which provides the services of experienced in-house counsel. Jackie Dinsmore, who is a former corporate securities lawyer with Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP and was assistant general counsel at TorStar for eight years, speaks to many solo in-house counsel and other small departments headed up by lawyers like Bolhuis who find themselves with lots of work to get done. "When I was at TorStar we were a team of three lawyers with what seemed like work for 10," says Dinsmore, who is now a client services manager with Cognition. "When I called Jackie I said I felt like I needed a clone of myself," said Bolhuis. A lawyer from Cognition now sits side-by-side with Bolhuis at the Diageo 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 august 2013 • 33

• Cover