Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/387997
october 2014 40 INHOUSE legal, compliance, and regulations depart- ment. She knew her team of 10 lawyers, law clerks, compliance officers, and regulations writers were doing great work, but she also recognized there were opportunities for better communication between legal and the business units and improved efficiencies in workflow. "At Interac, we don't have some of the same challenges other law departments have — business units disregarding legal advice or avoiding the department altogether — but I wanted people in the organization to see us as members of the team," says Lawal. At the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013, Interac's CEO, Mark O'Connell, launched an initiative to improve appreciation and understanding of the various roles and job functions within the 200-person organiza- tion. That campaign, coupled with Lawal's promotion to deputy general counsel and her already close working relationship with the chief legal & development officer, Marc- André Lacombe, created a prime opportu- nity for rebranding the LCR department. So she did exactly what you would expect from a Harvard-educated lawyer on a mis- sion: she buried herself in research in an effort to identify a tangible framework for amping up service levels within Interac's LCR department. "I did a lot of reading on law management, and there was a lot of good general information, but I didn't see much on concrete steps." Frustrated with the lack of clear and con- cise strategies on how legal departments at- tack a rebranding exercise, Lawal decided to draft her own. "I wrote down all my thoughts — concrete steps, misperceptions, misconceptions — all those things I thought we could get some traction on," she explains. "I gave my team the hand-written document, and got their input on the content and on specific things I was asking the department to commit to." Her framework included a set of guiding principles for LCR, which spelled out direc- tives such as, "Never let someone leave with the perception that you've put sand in their gears; they must know and believe that you have — or can get — oil to make things flow better," and new service commitments to the business units around guaranteed turn- around times for drafting non-disclosure agreements, regulation interpretations, and consulting services agreements.