Canadian Lawyer InHouse

17 canadianlawyermag.com/inhouse february 2015 what major project will your team be focused on in 2015? Our big project for 2015 and beyond is a regional express rail service using GO Transit, available on all seven of our rail corridors which will transform the way GO Transit operates its system and provide a lot of new travel choices. It's going to be a major focus for us in the next 10 years — we're going to trans- form commuter rail service into a regional express rapid transit system with electrifi ed service and 15 minute frequencies in core areas in both directions even on the eve- nings and weekends. That will kick off an enormous amount of transactional legal work. We will have to build additional tracks, electrifi cation infra- structure, and new stations. We will need to acquire new types of trains. We will support lots of environmental assessments and com- plete hundreds of real estate acquisitions. It will require agreements with the municipalities in the region and we also hope to get involved in innovative agreements with developers so we can do transit-oriented development around our stations which will help raise additional monies for our programs but will also be very interesting and different. It's going to be very fast paced, compli- cated work and I think the lawyers are look- ing forward to it. One of the reasons people come here is they feel they're doing impor- tant public work which makes a difference. Of course whenever you're building in a dense urban environment you do incon- venience people and it's inevitable there will be unhappy people. That's part of the challenge. It's important to properly bal- ance public good versus individual incon- venience. Legal works closely with Metro- linx's communications to ensure we engage affected communities, understand their concerns and both accommodate and miti- gate to the extent possible. This not only helps contain any legal liability but it is the right thing to do. how do you approach crisis management in the organization? Derailments that have happened elsewhere have infl uenced what we are doing. We carefully plan to avoid things like col- lisions and spills of dangerous goods. Rail safety has always been a priority but with re- cent rail incidents like Lac-Mégantic that was a pretty nasty reminder to all of us you have to always be focusing on it. Even though it's low risk, it's high impact. We don't carry dangerous goods over our seven corridors but we do allow CN and CP to do so. So that is something we think a lot about. We are regularly updating our emergency response poli- cies. We also have a business continuity plan in place and we are always updat- ing our crisis communications plan. Legal is really enmeshed in all of this and communications is a really big part of it all. If there is an incident, in this world of 24-hour instant news there's no room for signfi cant debate on response. You have to have a plan in place that tells who is going to communicate what to whom. Typically, lawyers operate in an en- vironment where what is said may hurt one's position and silence is regarded as preferable to a communications mistake. In a crisis situation, the opposite is often true. In a crisis it's what you don't say that can be detrimental to your organization. If people are upset with you it won't help you in a litigation situation. During the fl ooding incident last summer water came up to sec- ond level of our bi-level trains in the Don Valley area. We drew on the Maple Leaf Foods Listeriosis incident — we accept- ed responsibility and focused on constantly getting the facts out using social media. how do you handle the procurement of external legal services? I increasingly try and use the internal team whenever possible. From a retention and a development point of view it's important to keep as much of the good work in-house as possible. At Metrolinx we have been fortunate in that virtually all of our hires come from ma- jor Toronto fi rms and they have the same kind of experience we would retain exter- nally at much higher rates. Also, it is very diffi cult for an external lawyer to compete with the operations insights an intenal law- yer gains by working closely with our four operation divisions. Even though legal services don't, under the government di- rective, have to be procured competi- tively, as a public agency I feel there is a benefi t to generat- ing competition. We instituted a vendor-of -record list of law fi rms for all major areas of focus. That said, I am moving more and more towards a consolidation made with three or four law fi rms who I feel under- stand the Metrolinx business operations. There is a lot of effi ciency to be gained by working with people on that basis. I do be- lieve in project budgets when possible and I have done them. I always ask for discounts on hourly rates and volume discounts — my excuse is we're a government agency. But I think that with the volume of work and the opportunity to work on some of Canada's largest and most interesting deals I would get them anyway. how do you keep the lawyers in your department engaged? what is the structure you've created? Previously all lawyers reported to me but when I got to the 16-lawyer mark I had to the Don Valley area. We drew on the Maple the government di- rective, have to be procured competi- tively, as a public agency I feel there is a benefi t to generat- mary martin: executive vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary metrolinx, Toronto years as gc: 7 department: 17 lawyers SaNdra STraNgemore

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