Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50876
That's why in a large downtown Toronto conference room, the chatter and the nodding perk up among the 50 or so in-house lawyers in attend- ance when a Corporate Counsel World Summit session gets into the topic of finding the right legal representation in other jurisdictions. Ildiko Mehes, gen- eral counsel at Teva Canada Ltd., rec- ommends a direct approach. She says it's best to interview several local law- yers if the company feels it is necessary, because choosing the wrong lawyer is not an option. "My guiding principle is picking the best [local] counsel there is," says Mehes, one of the speakers in the session. There also needs to be careful evalu- ation of the local firms chosen to repre- sent a company overseas when it comes to applicable professional standards, says Frank S. Ryan, general counsel and secretary of Nexans USA Inc. "The pro- fessional standards of lawyers are not the same everywhere," says Ryan. "The idea of conflicts is not the same we would consider under our professional ethics. And sometimes a firm will have a conflict and it doesn't give the best advice, so we have to be careful with that. That's what I advise people." For Anduri, that's one area where membership in a multinational network helps because the firms go through quality screening before admission. He says Lex Mundi puts its member firms under periodical evaluation, and mem- bership does not come with a lifetime guarantee. "It can be revoked," he says, if the standards are not kept up to the level expected by the network. At Meritas too, firms have been termi- nated, says Kallish. But it is usually not about quality issues, and termination is an unusual occurrence, he adds. As companies struggled with the economic crisis, firms both in Canada and the United States have come under tremendous pressure to provide more value in their billing, and that has led to some evolution at the legal alliances too. "The clients' desire for more value in the amount they are paying for legal services . . . to have alternative-fee arrangement, discount arrangements [has led to] intense pressure on law firms," says Anduri. One result of such pressure that is increasingly appearing in the U.S. market, but likely to make its way up to Canada as well, is the idea of pulling resources to provide services by several network firms in different parts of McCallum, chairman of TerraLex. "We have seen . the country, says Charles E. . . a group of members approaching in-house counsel and say- ing, 'Look we would like you to consid- er a consortium — we'll manage it — of TerraLex firms to handle a business that you might normally have given to a global firm, because we can deliver, we believe, as good or better quality at less cost,'" says McCallum. He adds mid-size firms are telling in-house counsel in the United States al alliances of law firms, according to Jacqui Hurd, head of marketing opera- tions and global client development at LexisNexis, who recently presented the study at a Legal Marketing Association event in Toronto. Speaking at the same event, Bill VanderBurgh, a partner at Aird & Berlis LLP and a former vice chairman at Interlaw Ltd., said referrals from other law firms make up a good portion of business for a lot of firms. "We keep track of the referrals," he said of his Toronto-based firm. "I look at monthly statistics. Our experience has been that it is very important to keep in contact with Interlaw." But the relationship also needs to be a two-way street. "If someone tells you they don't expect anything in return, either they We have the Meritas logo on the cards. The Meritas brand is one with us. KEN KALLISH, Minden Gross LLP that "you don't need to be limited to going to a financial capital to get your lawyers; you can use a strong regional firm and get broad coverage, you can use alliances of firms." The relationship with the alliances is important to many law firms because they get a considerable chunk of their income through referrals from other member law firms. A quarter of law firms recently surveyed in a global study said they derive more than 20 per cent of their annual revenues via referrals from other law firms. The study, com- missioned by LexisNexis Martindale- Hubbell, polled 734 legal professionals from mid- and large-sized law firms in western and eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the U.S. Companies doing business across jurisdictional borders increasingly rely on lawyer-to-lawyer referrals. But 27 per cent of firms surveyed said their firm doesn't track referrals, according to the study. And one of the most impor- tant vehicles for referrals is internation- are lying to you or they have missed the boat," says Allan Bronstein, a partner at Torkin Manes LLP, which belongs to the International Alliance of Law Firms. While Canadian firms were not included in the survey, the results are relevant since many Canadian firms are part of international referral asso- ciations. "From a number of round- table meetings that we have held with law firms . . . the research does reso- nate with law firms throughout the world," says Bryn Hughes, a market- ing and communications manager at LexisNexis. The good news for inter- national alliances is that there doesn't seem to be any decrease in the pace of globalization. "In terms of the client becoming more global, needing inter- national resources, that continues to be the case," says Anduri. "Law firms are faced with the need to provide help to clients outside their home jurisdiction — which is something that is of benefit to us." 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