Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50891
Well in that particular example it's quite possible that the law firm would be ren- dering services to our client. It may well be on our roster. And so whatever favour- able or preferred rates that we may have with them we pass on to the company. Because of course, ultimately we're com- peting in a market for financial products and the extent to which we can put those products on the market at competitive prices, we'll do that and we'll pay our own in introducing the lower costs to you. So you'll get the benefit is the short answer. And you're always in a position because you can always use your own counsel. AGOSTINO: One of the things that we hear a lot about in this whole discus- sion is predictability. . . . And one of the things, it seems to me, that it's reason- able to expect from a firm is that if you go to them because they are an expert in some particular area then they need to do more than say, "Well, we can't really tell you [how much it will cost]. . . ." We're coming to you because you do this all the time so you should be able to give us a fair degree of accuracy in predicting your rate. INHOUSE: How does technology make your life easier? What is the relationship between the legal and IT departments? PATHE: We have offices in a number of jurisdictions in different countries, and we do almost all of our busi- ness with [local] partners in Japan and partners, with lawyers, with different people in the business units and mak- ing sure that the right people are talking to one another. That consumes a huge amount of my day regardless of where I am. The technology for the communi- cation is what makes that possible. DESJARDINS: Everybody accesses everything, so sharing saves time, paper, and co-ordination, because everybody's got access at the same time to the same type of base documents that are being produced. I think that's very useful. Korea, and projects in Madagascar, so I mean we've experimented with things. Videoconferencing has been without great success frankly, so we spend a lot of time travelling. We spend a lot of time going to meetings to maintain partner relationships so we've become incredibly dependent on the BlackBer- ry, our laptops, and anything frankly that makes it easier to stay in touch in different time zones. . . . Commercially, communication is vitally important to us. That's most of our job. . . . It's just because so much of it is communicat- ing and maintaining a relationship with SILVERBERG: We're a big propo- nent at Dell on telecommuting. It's finding ways for people to do business no matter where they are. They can access the web; they can access the office. We have so many conferences by web. We use SharePoint for tons of all sorts of marketing reviews and floor exercises for our senior manage- ment team meeting. Everything goes on there. I know there are some concerns that technology will never be perfect and there will always be somebody who finds a way around [security measures], but I think that's a challenge you have whether you're using IT or whether you're using old-fashioned ways, and INHOUSE AUGUST 2010 • 21