Canadian Lawyer InHouse

7 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE JANUARY 2017 A roundup of legal department news and trends Stephen Sigurdson, general counsel of Manulife, remembered by peers M embers of Ontario's legal com- munity have been grieving the loss of Stephen Sigurdson, Manulife general counsel and former Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP partner, who died Nov. 16 in Toronto following a cardiac ar- rest in October; he was 56. "Steve was a wonderful guy," David All- good, counsel for Dentons Canada LLP, told Legal Feeds. "I knew him as a partner at Osler, as a part of the general counsel community and as member of the Dean's Advisory Council at Queens Law. He was a smart lawyer with great judgment. "Steve was a very good lawyer, but he was also a very good person," Allgood adds. "He was unassuming, understated; he was a warm, generous person, beyond being an excellent lawyer. What differentiates him is the quality of the individual. He was a real team player." A native of Manitoba, Sigurdson studied civil engineering at the University of Man- itoba and law at Queen's University, where he met his wife, Leslie, and graduated in the class of '84. He was a devoted Queen's alum and became a member of the Queen's Law Dean's Council (his eldest daughter, Laura, would also graduate from Queen's Law in 2013). and franchised operations across Canada and the U.S. Building on the existing risk manage- ment program, Chow initiated the develop- ment of a risk management web page to ed- ucate employees and franchisees in creating a safer workplace. The idea was to enhance and measure guest experiences through proactive risk controls and best practices to reduce insurance claims. That then allowed the company to negotiate improvements to its insurance program. It's an example of understanding risk be- haviour, and how to go after low-hanging fruit in an organization when you're a small in-house team. With 10,000 employees, building a culture of good practices has been key to risk management in the organi- zation, she said. The company has also introduced a series of "insurance video minutes" to show em- ployees good practices. She sees it as "brand defence": If a customer has a bad experience in the restaurant, it's about more than the value of the meal — the brand also suffers. "It became an insurance management is- sue," she said, noting it's similar to sneaking vegetables into a child's daily diet. "We're 'sneaking' risk management into the enter- prise diet. We also ask employees to come up with ideas to avoid risk. Staff are asked to submit ideas to make the company better." Chow says in-house counsel also have to practise "actively avoiding being the Dr. No." "One of the ways to do that is to start by looking at the low-hanging fruit," she said. Morrison of Blakes advises not treating risk as "the boogeyman" but rather to take a step back and spend a little time deciding what potential incidents could be proac- tively avoided or planned for, realizing you "can't cover the waterfront." Bowles of UrtheCast, a Vancouver-based company that has high-defi nition cameras on the International Space Station, says a good fi rst step is to do a risk assessment of the organization. "UrtheCast is fi ve years old and continu- ally changing," he said, noting that a fast- growing company brings with it different kinds of risk challenges. He explained that last year the company did an acquisition of a company from Spain with two satellites in the air but it did not have a comprehensive compliance program. "We were struggling with dealing with the cultural issues of imposing our will on a company that had been in business for a number of years and putting a North Amer- ican executive team in that business with language and cultural barriers," he said. Morrison agreed with Bowles, adding that, after the risk assessment, it's important to build a policy and procedures to address the identifi ed risks, but it shouldn't be "just a piece of paper" but an effective program that evolves all the time. "If it's important and you're going to turn your attention to it, be sure you follow through on it," he said. Thomas said for him it boils down to all executives on the team being aware of up- coming changes. "Rolling out a program is one thing, but making sure it is being followed is another. Sales people, for example, are not always the best at following procedures. It's a mat- ter of people following proper practices," said Thomas. But Chow is adamant that in-house counsel should not be the ones holding the bag entirely for risk management in an organization. "From my perspective, you don't want to be the only one holding the weight of the organization on your shoulders," she said. "A lot of what we do is about personal buy- in from the team and operations." Thomas agreed. "There are so many risks, it's not possible for one person to be the champion of all of it." At UrtheCast, Bowles said the approach is by consensus at the executive level when it comes to deciding what fruit they are go- ing to pick. "We look at what the business strategy is and we're constantly re-evaluating what the risk assessment is — you need to have vis- ibility to all of that," he said. IH STEPHEN SIGURDSON

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