Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50891
FISH: We have a very strong group of professional risk managers who manage risk on an enterprise-wide basis within our various lines of business but also within the corporate fraction. So the legal group, for example, has its own legal risk management framework, a policy docu- ment with all sorts of procedures, which is very much a part of this building box for the overall risk management framework. We have just started introducing elements of that in our engagement terms with our outside counsel. . . . And I have to say that the firms are responding very positively about it. They have said to us it's novel, they've never seen it before. . . . It's all part of the framework and new culture that we now have. IH FITZGERALD: We're structured the same way. It is very effective. PATHE: It's one of the more inter- esting parts of this job frankly. It's one of the biggest transitions I found from moving from private practice into doing in-house . . . law firms take the approach that risk is something that needs to be avoided at all costs. And you get in-house and you find out that business guys are ready to go and do deals regardless of what you tell them the risks are. SILVERBERG: I have the same sort of reaction about the value billing . . . but law firms just don't seem to have evolved their practice over the last 10 or 20 years the way every single in-house counsel has had to. The way I practise law has really no bearing or resemblance to what I did when I started at Torys [LLP] a million years ago in terms of . . . identifying all the risks and sort of tell- ing everybody what they can't do. You would not last five minutes in-house if that's the approach you took. And yet you're paying very generous sums of money to outside counsel to give you that kind of advice still when they know it's nothing you could use internally and so it's a constant. I understand where they're coming from saying they are still trained in a certain way. [Outside counsel] still see their role in a certain way, but I think they have to get a little bit more comfortable with risk because as far as I'm concerned my job is not avoiding risk, my job is identifying and managing it. ntitled-1 1 � � INHOUSE AUGUST 2010 • 23 6/23/10 4:07:17 PM