Canadian Lawyer InHouse

WHAT IS THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT'S APPROACH TO RISK MANAGEMENT? I really see the evolution happening with much more of a focus on lawyers activing in a proactive way when it comes to risk. I think in-house counsel adds value most when identifying and eliminating risk up front before they become barriers on critical pathways to commercial opportunities. Long gone are the days when you sit in your office and have the business make appointments to see you. We are proactive- COMING TO www.canadianlawyermag.com/canadianlawyer-tv/InHouse Canada's leading in-house counsel explore their challenges for the year ahead Robyn Collver Canadian Tire January 27 Daniel Desjardins Bombardier February 17 BMO February 3 Shell Canada February 24 Audrey Mak March 3 OMERS February 10 VIEW 2014 26 February 2014 InHouseViewBlakes_IH_Feb_14.indd 1 BROUGHT TO YOU BY INHOUSE WHAT IS THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT DOING TO CHANGE THE WAY IT SOURCES EXTERNAL LEGAL COUNSEL? We're always in discussions with external providers on how they can add value. Of course the important thing for us is value for our money and being competitive in terms of how we're spending our budget. We try to do a lot of the work in-house because that goes to our value-adding mantra in terms of being able to provide the business with varying forms of legal counsel that understands the business. We typically go outside and use external counsel in areas where we don't have a particular expertise for that matter or where we have a particular project or matter where we need extra horsepower. One thing that is defi nitely growing in the global legal market is legal process outsourcing — having commodity work or lower value work done by not necessarily law firms but services based in India or the Philippines where that work is predicated upon repetitive need for that type of work and we don't fi nd we have the demand for that in Canada with respect to our business. WHAT'S YOUR VIEW ON DIVERSITY IN THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT? Leanne Geale Simon Fish ly involved — we need to clear the path for business. Our View 2014 panel offer their collective thoughts on the year ahead I'm on the executive committee for Legal Leaders for Diversity. We are really focused on raising our game within the legal industry both in-house and with the law firms and law schools in recognizing the value of diversity and inclusiveness and how that can add to the bottom line both of law firms and the value of the advice and the completeness of the answers we can apply to our commercial clients to make them more competitive. We have had conversations with external firms more generally about this issue, usually when we are having our relationship conversations with the firms we talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion and we want them to produce a diverse team as well. IH 14-01-09 12:17 PM

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