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brought Tamara, John, and I together because we had to make sure our strat- egy was consistent across all of those lines." Why the relationship works After five years on the case, Kiser and Glendinning have logged a lot of hours together. Often she'll field a question when she's at a hockey game and John's talking to the parent company in Eng- land six hours ahead. Glendinning says it's the most time she's spent with any client in her entire career. "I have called Deborah mad and yelling at her and she's done the same thing to me. We've been in cabs before where I'm sure the driver thought 'these two are going through a divorce,'" jokes Kiser. "I never pull rank on her though and say I'm the client and that's that. If she tells me something I may react emotionally but then go off and think." "If there's any heated discussions, it's typically reacting to external issues and how to deal with them — if there is any stress at all that's where it comes from — not that we disagree with what we need to do but how do we best approach it," Glendinning adds. She says the relationship works Glendinning started by introducing him to people at the firm and together they began identifying the strengths and weaknesses of people and strengths and weaknesses of the team, essentially building a huge litigation machine that was ready to face their opposition. "We were dealing with the provinces, the federal government, and various plain- tiffs' firms, and of course something that can never be overlooked, which is public scrutiny," he says. Glendinning doesn't add or sub- tract lawyers to the team without let- ting Kiser know first. The team roster undergoes constant revision so if they think someone is underperforming they come off the team. If she has someone new she wants to introduce to the team, Kiser meets them. "For me, it's knowing the team and the size of the team; then you can limit and estimate how many hours will be spent," says Kiser. What's unique about the Imperial Tobacco case, says Glendinning, is the sheer magnitude of the organizational demands it presents. "Given the size and the importance and the scope of the litigation and the fact that it spans the country we didn't just have to deal with internal issues relating to Impe- rial because it is industry wide. In some respects it is also international litigation, and so that presented a very unique set of challenges," she says. It means she must stickhandle around the politics of dealing not only with the client, the client's related com- panies, the other players in the domes- tic industry, and the international industry. "In my view it's the organi- zation and co-ordination issues that are the biggest challenges. That's what 24 • DECEMBER 2011/JANUARY 2012 INHOUSE because they have a "non-conventional solicitor-client relationship." It's not a situation where Kiser and Gitto are giving the instructions. "We actually work together as a team to develop strategies in full knowledge of what the business implications are, what the objectives are, and what our endgame in the litigation is and we very much come together as a team like that," she says. That's unique for an in-house client relationship. "We all work on a common base of knowledge so I understand what's important to them and they understand what's important in the legal landscape. We can talk through the issues and come to a solu- tion." One aspect Glendinning found par- ticularly unusual and appreciates is that she can openly voice her opinions. "It's not that I have to defer to them — they won't always agree with me but