Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50883
Nicole Broley legal counsel answer quickly. And then in terms of publications or information from law firms, those free breakfast seminars are always welcome. INHOUSE: What are some of the strategies you are using to control costs overall? ROSENTHAL: When I started, we actually didn't have an inside counsel. I created the position, and I basically cre- ated the department. So our CEO was using outside counsel for everything. I basically weaned the company off of that. But, certainly when I started . . . he had created all of our, sort of our struc- ture and our precedents. He walked me resources that are going to be assigned. You tend to have a primary contact for any given area, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you want that person working on that particular project. Our contacts tend to be . . . partner level to senior partner level, and often that is not the right resource. You need to be clear about the level of expertise you are looking for in a given project. KREBS: Well, we are very familiar with this effort too. We refer to it as to reconnect cost and value, and we call it our ACC Value Challenge. And there is an effort to look at a variety of ways . . . both how law firms do business and how law departments do business, and to perhaps change the model a little bit, and to change the focus, and to get things thinking about ways that you would do business and do business differently, and to move away when pos- sible and when it makes sense, to move away from the billable hour as the sole mechanism for billing. INHOUSE: That covers outside counsel, but what about inside costs? through everything. We went through a lot of transactions together, and then they basically let me go on my own. So I have reduced . . . the cost of out- side counsel considerably. And now, I do tend to just use it in very serious situations in a litigation type of situa- tion where . . . I will even draft, at times, the pleading, and then our outside counsel will review it. But I am always keeping in mind that I have to keep the costs down because I do have litigation experience anyway. I am able to draft the pleadings, and put together discovery, and do these things, so that our out- side counsel doesn't have to put so many hours into it. VIBERT: The other thing that is helpful is to have a discussion with outside counsel about the type of 20 • OCTOBER 2009 INHOUSE ALLGOOD: In our retail banking area, we have over, I guess close to 500 questions and answers, which are on our [Intranet] site, so that branch Leslie Rosenthal general counsel DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. Deloitte & Touche LLP people and other operational people in the retail bank can go, look for the frequently asked questions, get answers that we keep Evergreen on a regular basis. And then . . . there is an escala- tion provision [if] they feel that doesn't answer their question . . . we get a lot of very positive comments out of our whole branch network about their ability to solve a lot of problems and a lot faster, essentially with the client in front of them, than if they had to track down a lawyer, talk to the lawyer, [and] get the lawyer's answer. KREBS: But one of the things in this, it is not just the other departments, and the other employees, and the company management, and other divisions that you sometimes have to get to change, it is yourself or your own lawyers because frequently they get comfort- able [in] doing, and they like doing this, and [are] somewhat resistant to change. ALLGOOD: Change management is a huge ongoing problem . . . not a problem, it is a challenge that you need to address. And, without giv- ing too much of a plug to Richard Susskind . . . he wrote this book called The End of Lawyers? At least it had a question mark at the end of it. But I have an operating committee of about 10 senior lawyers, and then I bought them all copies and made them read the book. Then I told them we are going to have a book club meeting a