NOVEMBER 2017
22
INHOUSE
W
hen Harpreet Sidhu began
her role as general counsel
at Pethealth Inc. three years
ago, the company was using
one large law firm for all of its legal work. In
such a large company and without a legal de
-
partment, the default approach was to send
the work out to one trusted provider.
"Before I was in this role, there was no in-
house counsel, everything was sent to one Bay
Street firm and they handled it all for us —
litigation, trademarks, insurance defence —
everything, and it was by default," she says.
She started to look at the options avail
-
able. "There are so many options, I thought,
'why are we using one firm for everything?'"
After exploring all the options and the de-
mands of the work her company had, she re-
alized a mix of big national firms, boutiques
and sole practitioners was a better formula.
"Boutiques provide cost effectiveness and
variety of knowledge around what they know
about different areas of the law," she says.
"I think a lot [of big firms] didn't have
time to learn our business and the boutiques
had more time to come in and learn our busi
-
ness and see how we run our call centre, how
we sell insurance and how we market to our
customers," she says. "It's all about personal-
ized service and, if you have a good relation-
In-house counsel say boutique approach fosters familiarity
and specialized knowledge of business
BY JENNIFER BROWN
