Canadian Lawyer InHouse

33 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE MAY 2017 contractual clauses that would be required in countries that don't have adequacy," he says. "So I think there's a question mark about the real need for that adequacy fi nding." Because Canadian companies do not yet know whether the adequacy fi nding will re- main, they should be preparing themselves, argue experts. Bryan Friedman, general manager for Canada at technology legal ser- vices company Axiom, breaks GDPR readi- ness into two main stages. The fi rst is preparation. It involves re- viewing internal policies and processes around data transfer and creating boiler- plate clauses to meet privacy requirements. Lawyers must also fi nd the relevant con- tracts to review. Secondly, in the review and remediation phase, they must analyze those existing contracts to fi nd and update the necessary language. He argues that lawyers might fi nd con- tract revision challenging. "The legal world still relies on this arti- sanal or bespoke way of dealing with con- tracting challenges, whereas other large challenges that are technological or opera- tional in nature tend to have an industrial, structured approach," he warns. Lawyers should build a base of contracts that are digitally structured and tagged with metadata that enables them to effi ciently re- mediate paper contracts not just once but in future cases, he suggests. This is all good advice, but some lawyers have more immediate concerns. Robert Pi- asentin, board member at the Association of Corporate Counsel, is also general counsel and privacy offi cer at Vancouver tech fi rm Sierra Systems. He understands GDPR, but he is focused on other matters. "It's not a high enough priority just yet because we still have a big enough window to get things in line," he says. Right now, his attention is focused south of the border. On Jan. 25, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States." Section 14 of that order repealed the protections of the U.S. Privacy Act for non- U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. This has Piasentin, whose company deals extensively with the U.S., concerned. "It is a worry because it has the potential to be very chilling from a privacy perspec- tive in terms of what we're able to do and how much leverage we have to protect the infor- mation of Canadians that have any dealing with American counterparts," he says. No one seems equipped to deal with this development yet, given the quickly chang- ing legal landscape in the U.S. The privacy commissioner is "aware of the issue" and "currently analyzing the potential implica- tions for Canadians." With changing rules across the Atlantic and south of the border, Canadian counsel faces uncertainty and a potentially time- consuming and far-reaching remediation project. With the GDPR, at least, they have a window in which to do the necessary ground- work. Given the potential scope of the work, they may not want to leave it too long. IH Because business issues are legal issues. So if you want to get ahead in business, get the degree that gets you there faster. ONE YEAR – PART - TIME – NO THESIS FOR L AWYERS AND NON - LAWYERS law.utoronto.ca/ExecutiveLLM GPLLM Global Professional Master of Laws [Get a Master of Laws] Untitled-3 1 2015-03-02 9:02 AM

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