Canadian Lawyer InHouse

SEPTEMBER 2017 18 INHOUSE T he Toronto District School board is the largest in the country and has about 40,000 employees, the vast majority of which are unionized with either teachers' federations, the Canadian Union of Public Employees or other associations. The cost of dealing with all of the griev- ances that come out of the unionized em- ployee groups was eating up more than half of the TDSB's legal budget. Working with the union legal counsel from CUPE, the TDSB labour relations le- gal team began a pilot project to deal with the signifi cant backlog of grievances fi led by CUPE. About 16,000 TDSB employees are rep- resented by CUPE Local 4400 in various support staff roles. In 2014, CUPE exter- nal legal counsel and TDSB in-house legal counsel began discussions to look at alter- native approaches to the traditional labour I t's been an amazing summer as we have travelled around Ontario and other parts of the country speaking to the winners of our fourth annual Innovatio awards. From Canopy Growth (formerly Tweed Marijuana Inc.), where Phil Shaer is doing deals in a space that is part of a fundamental change in how society views cannabis, to the biggest corporate merger in Canadian history — Enbridge/Spectra — we have visited with legal departments small and large. And I can tell you they are all passionate about what they do. This year we specifi cally made a call out to public sector organizations to consider sub- mitting nominations on the work they are doing to make change in their legal depart- ments. This was on the suggestion of our esteemed judges, who for the last few years have remarked that the public sector nominations really deserved their own category when you consider the different challenges they are up against. They face different regulatory chal- lenges as well as taxpayer scrutiny on what they do. They are also often doing work with a small staff on a limited budget. So it was interesting that the overall winner that emerged from this year's impressive lineup would be acting general counsel Leola Pon and her team at the Toronto District School Board. The judges were impressed with what Pon has achieved in the context of a massive organization — the TDSB is the fourth largest school board in North America — and one that is often in the news and not always in a positive light. Working with her opposing counsel from the public sector union, Pon came up with a way to reduce the time and cost involved in arbi- trations (labour relations work was eating up 50 per cent of her budget) as well as fi nding ways to provide ready legal advice across the organi- zation to improve her client service experience. Pon's group was also chosen for the Diversity award in the public sector, small departments category. She has taken steps to hold law fi rms accountable for their diversity claims, and ensuring her team has training around anti-racism, anti-oppression and those with disabilities. The themes I noticed this year in the other winning nominations included smart use of data (TD, ATS Automation, BMO, Husky Injection Molding) and access to real-time information. Using data in smart ways is giving legal departments the ability to make de- cisions faster, mitigate risks earlier and cut costs. As one of our judges, Dean Scaletta of Manitoba Public Insurance, put it, regarding the ATS Automation win for the compli- ance award, small departments, "For me, the most innovative aspect of the whole process was the effective use made of data that was already being collected and stored to manage and streamline a complex web of interrelated commercial activities. The ability of the new system to harness this readily-available data demonstrated tremendous insight to, and un- derstanding of, the underlying business imperatives for ATS." Scaletta went on to say, ". . . it is clear from the narrative that the lawyers were key driv- ers of the development and implementation of the new system. It is one thing to develop a technically profi cient system, but it is quite another to have that system effectively gather the data necessary to make appropriate risk-based business and legal decisions. ATS Legal made sure those data elements were identifi ed and incorporated into the system in a manner that ultimately benefi ted the business as a whole." The other common element to some of the nominations was "real-time information" and "speed of the deal" (ATS, BMO, Enbridge, Spin Master and Canopy Growth). Quite simply these days, there's no time to lose. I hope you enjoy reading about the winning legal departments chosen by our judges this year. IH Innovate Finding a better path to resolution on costly, time-consuming labour arbitration By Jennifer Brown faster and smarter to move

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