Canadian Lawyer InHouse

33 canadianLawyErmag.com/inhousE august 2014 When Lorne O'Reilly was a securities lawyer at Gowling Lafl eur Henderson LLP he had no plans to leave private practice. That is until he received a call from a headhunter in the fall of 2007 who con- vinced him to consider a position at Calgary-based oil and gas company Pengrowth Energy Corp. "I had zero interest in changing; I hadn't thought at all about doing in-house counsel work," he says, noting he had been focused on securities and M&A law for four years and enjoyed what he was doing. But after a series of convincing discussions he made the leap to Pengrowth and two years later he took what he had learned and went to Superior Plus Corp. When he joined Superior as associate general counsel, O'Reilly took the initiative to consolidate legal matters and has lead an effort to reduce exter- nal legal costs and create effi ciencies through the integration of practices in areas such as contract management, claims management, and external counsel retention. "When I looked at the initial organization Su- perior Propane alone had probably 35 to 40 differ- ent external counsel it used across the country," he says. "Then we had other subsidiaries in the Supe- rior Plus Group that also had a number of different fi rms. Some matched, some didn't. I would call up on one matter and they would send me information and the audit would come back showing they were also handling other matters for some of our other business but didn't know they were the same," says O'Reilly. "Starting to work on synergies was an immediate opportunity for cost savings for us." O'Reilly admits he "had to take a chance." It paid off. "We were able to demonstrate success on immediate response times for our internal clients and immediate cost reductions by managing the fact they no longer had to go to external counsel on some things and identifying synergies where they existed, for example, in labour and employment." "We were able to leverage the fact that by using one fi rm, not four different fi rms, and by using a particular lawyer (after analysis of the billings) we could say this fi rm has come out as the best player in results and in what they have billed us," he says. That involved "persistence over time" says O'Reilly, as many of the business units had strong relationships with their outside counsel. "To win that over we had to demonstrate success and value for them. The great thing is that my boss at the Introducing: COnSOLIDATInG EXTErnAL LAW FIrMS nETS SUPErIOr PLUS SAVInGS BY JENNIFER BROWN It involved 'persistence over time.' Lorne O'Reilly Superior Plus Corp. catEgory: Tomorrow's Leader in Innovation dEpartmEnt siZE: Small company: Superior Plus Corp. BRIaN HaRDER

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