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TECH SUPPORT The rules are M ore industries and institutions are regulated today than ever before. Regulations cover more aspects of how organizations operate; rules are stricter, and more strictly enforced. This is good for customers, patients, citizens, and the environment. It's also a major opportunity for law firms. Most regulated organizations need help with the legal complexities. "Nine or 10 years ago, you would not find someone practising all the time in privacy or some other area of compliance," says Adam Kardash, a partner at Heenan Blaikie LLP and co-head of the firm's national privacy and access to informa- tion law group. "Now we have a whole team working on nothing but privacy Off-the-rack compliance solutions make legal service more cost-effective. changing BY GERRY BLACKWE LL and access to information. It has just exploded." Law firms that see this new demand as a windfall or potential cash cow and approach it in traditional ways may be in for a surprise. The paradigm for pro- viding legal services, especially around compliance, is shifting. Gone are the days when regulated companies would pay steep hourly fees for bespoke solu- tions, says Kardash. "Organizations just aren't going to pay [those kinds of fees] when increasingly they have access to easy-to-use and much-less-expensive technology-based solutions to provide needed content." Exhibit A is Heenan Blaikie's, which is on the verge of partnering with Corporate Responsibility System Technologies Ltd. (a.k.a. CRSTL — pronounced crystal — Solutions) of Toronto. CRSTL was founded six years ago by lawyer Felicia Salomon, a former general counsel and corporate chief compliance officer. It builds databases of content for specific regulatory regimes — those gov- erning public issuers or financial institu- tions, or related to privacy or anti-money laundering — and delivers them along with tools for analyzing compliance gaps, training employees, monitoring progress on closing gaps, and reporting status. In the old days, says Salomon, law firms would develop similar compliance- related content for a client and charge hourly fees for their lawyers to do the www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com OC T O BER 2009 23 JACQUI OAKLEY