Canadian Lawyer InHouse

7 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE MARCH 2016 A roundup of legal department news and trends more than doubled, to 48 per cent this year. This explosive growth refl ects ACC's own experience with the special member- ship division formed for legal operations professionals, which has grown by about 52 per cent — to almost 400 members from 258 different companies — since last June when the division launched its inaugural ACC Legal Ops Conference. This year's confer- ence, to be held in Chicago June 23-24, will focus on meeting the growing demand for skill development and collaboration on law department strategic planning, use of tech- nology, and innovation in managing inter- nal and external resources. CLOs in larger law departments were more likely to use alternative fee arrange- ments. Flat fees for an entire matter (41 per cent), fl at fees for some stages of a matter (40 per cent), and retainers (32 per cent) were the AFAs law department use most often. IH A career well crafted W hen asked what his plans are for retirement, George Bass pauses and is somewhat at a loss for words. "I will do what I want, when I want," he says with a laugh. "I really enjoy art exhibits and cooking . . . . I would also like to get involved with some corporate and charity boards." At the end of April, Bass will retire after 40 years in the legal profession, the last 17 in-house as vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company, the Wawanesa Life Insurance Company, and Wawanesa General Insurance Company (USA), which operates in Canada, Califor- nia, and Oregon. A life bencher with the Law Society of Manitoba, he has served on all major com- mittees of the Law Society as well as a num- ber of working groups and committees in the insurance industry. Bass fi rst arrived in-house in 1996 as gen- eral counsel of the Pan American Games when it was held in Winnipeg. It was a considerable change in direction having spent 19 years in general private practice in Neepawa and Brandon, primarily in the ar- eas of real estate, wills and estates, litigation, and corporate law. He had been looking to move from ru- ral Manitoba where he had been in private practice and saw the Pan Am opportunity as a great way to move forward. Little did he know he was entering a realm of law that was largely still in its infancy — the in-house bar. "It was being at the right place at the right time," says Bass. "It was a great opportunity. With the Pan Am Games, you're starting from zero and have to build everything — your processes, bylaws, the corporate secretarial function. The other part is you have an absolute deadline by which every- thing has to be done." In the early 1990s, Bass recalls becoming a general counsel was looked at as a way for a corporate lawyer to ease into retirement. "It wasn't looked at as a position where one was going to be active or proactive," says Bass. "I think the growth in-house has been healthy. I think corporations and society in general have been well served by more counsel be- ing in-house so they can gain knowledge and experience in terms of how the business is carried on." Bass has been part of a generation of in- house pioneers who changed the view of the role corporate counsel can play in the business. "It became a very vibrant position," he says. "It was expected that as general counsel you would have a seat at the business table and take part in those corporate discussions that took place and to do a lot more than what a lawyer in private practice would gen- erally do for a client." Following the Pan Am Games role, Bass became Wawanesa's fi rst in-house lawyer. During the three years he worked on the Games, the president of Wawanesa, Gregg Hanson, was one of the directors of the Games and chairman of the fi nance com- mittee. Unbeknown to Bass, Hanson was watching and the experience turned into a three-year job interview of sorts. Toward the end of 1999 Hanson told Bass if he was looking for his next position to consider a job in-house with Wawanesa. "With the way regulatory matters were changing in the insurance business, he wanted to have a general counsel in the com- pany. He said, 'You're the sort of person I would like to have, so please come and talk to me before you make any decisions.' It's quite amazing considering the company had been around for 103 years and was tremen- dously successful but hadn't had in-house counsel and had not used external counsel that much," says Bass. For the fi rst eight years, Bass was a legal department of one at Wawanesa, but it soon became diffi cult to handle the workload. He now has a department of four lawyers and one paralegal reporting to him. The team includes an associate GC at the company's subsidiary in California who has been in the position for the last 16 months. "During the fi rst year, every six weeks I spent three days with her just so that I could talk with her and get her to understand the culture of the parent company so we could have consistent decision-making in terms of the legal decisions and the advice we give. It has been a good investment and I'm already seeing the dividends in terms of the work she's doing," he says. Bass has also observed a broader evolution of the role of general counsel within Wawa- nesa and other insurance companies. "We moved from doing traditional corporate law only and started to work in areas that have really evolved such as regulatory and compli- ance, and for those of us who are also the cor- porate secretary, there has been a huge change in corporate governance issues," he says. His advice to lawyers who are new to the in-house role is to keep in tune with what's changing, get business experience, and watch what is changing in terms of method- ology. IH GEORGE BASS

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