Canadian Lawyer InHouse

7 canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse august 2014 a roundup of legal department news and trends news roundup Stepping up: Workshop aims to prepare women in-house counsel for the next level W hile the in-house bar in Can- ada has grown considerably in the last decade, competition for general counsel roles has increased. With fewer top legal jobs in public com- panies than in the U.S., the path to the GC office in Canada has become highly competitive and often difficult to reach. As with many senior leadership roles, women sometimes face more challenges than men in attaining the top spot. With that in mind, Deloitte and Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP recently spon- sored a workshop called Stepping Up: Pre- paring to be a GC. The event was held for 37 women in-house lawyers identified by their organizations as potential general counsel candidates. The attendees included lawyers like Kris- ti Lalach, vice president legal and compli- ance with FGL Sports Ltd. & Mark's Work Wearhouse in Calgary. Lalach has been with the company nine and a half years, starting in-house with the Forzani Group before it was acquired by Canadian Tire in 2011. She found the Stepping Up workshop a great way to get advice from those who have risen to the top. "The program wasn't necessarily how to succeed in-house as a woman but it explored strategies that could really help men and women get to that role," says Lalach who at- tended on the invitation of Robyn Collver, senior vice president, secretary and general counsel at Canadian Tire. "The panel who spoke about the path to leadership talked about their own stum- bling blocks and it was kind of a backstage pass to what it takes to be a GC. They were all very candid." Stepping Up is the first program of its kind to focus on leadership development for the next generation of women GCs in Canada. Its goal is to increase the number of women GCs in Canadian public and pri- vate companies, not-for-profit institutions, government entities, and Canadian subsid- iaries of multinationals. The program was inspired, in part, by the success of a similar initiative in the United States called Project 5/165, which is a call to action to increase the number of women GCs in Fortune 500 companies to 165 from 108 within five years. Lalach says she doesn't view the chal- lenge for women in-house lawyers in Cana- da to be as big of a problem as it is in the rest of the world, and viewed the event as more a way to navigate her career to the next level. Blakes and Deloitte worked with an advi- sory board of 20 senior lawyers to prepare a leadership development program designed to provide women with the skills, knowl- edge, and direction to take on the role of general counsel. Participation was by in- vitation-only via advisory board members and other general counsel. The advisory board includes male and female senior general counsel including Collver from Canadian Tire, Simon Fish, senior vice president and general counsel at BMO, Ken Fredeen, general counsel at De- loitte, Julia Shin Doi, general counsel and secretary of the board at Ryerson Univer- sity, and others. Fish says getting women promoted to senior roles in-house is seen as a challenge globally but the issues in Canada have more to do with availability of positions. "The issue in Canada is more one of op- portunities for women as there are fewer corporations and public companies with general counsel roles than in the U.S. The idea here is to make sure where there are opportunities we have the right people in the talent pool ready to step up into roles when they become available. This is aimed at high-potential individuals working in- house who we hope will be future leaders," says Fish. Lawyers from Blakes were also part of the development of Stepping Up. "We have done leadership programs for clients in the past and it was often standing- room only for programs aimed at women so we knew this would be of value," says Alison Jeffrey, chief client relations and marketing officer at Blakes. "We wanted to provide this group with access to general counsel who would provide candid and open advice about the path to leadership and what they did to break out." A Stepping Up LinkedIn group will be used to share information and resources and future events are being discussed. IH From project management comes predictability I t's rare these days for an in-house lawyer to hand over a litigation file to their external firm and simply wait for a result. Demands for cost control and efficient resolution mean the complete hands-off approach is no longer realistic. Enter the era of project manage- ment on litigation files. "That scenario probably still goes on to a certain extent but by and large that is histori- cally gone," said Eric Sigurdson, general attorney, staff legal with TD Insurance. "What we have today is a partnership where the client and external firm work together and build a litigation plan with roles and responsibilities clearly defined." "External counsel needs to view the problem from a broader, less parochial perspective than they have historically and in-house counsel need to be part of issuing instructions on the file. There needs to be early case assessment and a shift in the focus from processing a lawsuit and drifting through the stages to resolving the business problem," he said. The panel, organized by the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association's Ontario chapter and entitled "Litigation management part II: Implementing project management to improve effectiveness and efficiency," looked at the tools available to in-house and exter- nal counsel to improve management of litigation files. Project management is just one tool, along with RFPs and electronic invoice review, that can help in demonstrating the

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