Canadian Lawyer InHouse

17 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE JULY 2016 and some corporate-driven transactions, be it tax or fi nance, that are not routine. SPEIRS: We've just recently reduced our de- partment from two lawyers to one lawyer. We use the word lean a lot to constantly promote a high-value work product. We do use secondments and project-based work to manage volume at times. We also look at skill sets differently. So when a law clerk can do the work, we will have a law clerk do it, as opposed to a lawyer. • INHOUSE: Are your budgets looking staying fl at or growing? YOUNG: I think it goes without saying that we're always trying to keep it fl at. Our le- gal spend is primarily driven by what the business is doing. I have quarterly budget forecasting obligations. I have about seven reports I have to generate within a quarter. Some of them are monthly. It is a bit of a speculative exercise. THOUIN: I have to submit a budget every year and then I have to update it on a quar- terly basis, depending on what's going on. The expectation is you do your very best to stay within your budget. If you can't, or if there's any changes to the external spend budget, that conversation has to take place on a bigger scale to understand why we're growing all of a sudden. SILVERBERG: Budgeting is a very important part of what we do. For my business, there are always pressures to keep the budget fl at or even sometimes shrink the budget, de- pending on the environment. We're a few months away from a very large merger in which we're going to be inheriting more people, more budget, and so now is prob- ably not the time for us to increase our spend until we know what we've bought in our $67-billion acquisition [Ed note: Dell acquired tech behemoth EMC last fall]. You can't always plan out when you're in defen- sive litigation or subject of a class action. I think everybody understands that, but in terms of your day to day, we are expected to get a pretty good handle on that. SPEIRS: I think the key to budgeting is the communication one has with the executive team. Everyone tries to reduce their bud- get as much as possible. At the end of the day, you want to have cost savings and you want to contain or shrink legal spend; how- ever, sometimes, there are a whole bunch of variables that are beyond your control. Whether it's transactions or litigation, you can't always foresee certain things when you establish a budget at the beginning of a fi s- cal year. So, when that happens, I think the key is close communication with the execu- tive team, with your CFO, with your CEO, so that they get the proper notifi cation and can be part of the strategic planning of how you want to proceed. There are certain times where spending You have to talk about value, you can't just l 't j t talk numbers. I was able to really build the relationship with our business partners in-house to show that having somebody in-house, having an in-house lawyer, adds tremendous value, particularly in a regulated area like ours. ALENA THOUIN, Alterna Savings

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