Canadian Lawyer InHouse

23 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 4. WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY TO MANAGING THE IN-HOUSE LEGAL TEAM? I'm quite pleased to say we were able to keep our entire legal team intact over the down- turn. We have a desire to hire a person, probably a five- or six-year call, this spring. We're really pleased we were able to keep the entire team, and adding another person will take our department to eight lawyers and give us additional coverage in a par - ticular area. But it's not just about keeping people during that tough time where there wasn't as much career advancement or new titles or positions being handed out as easily. At those times, it's also about trying to keep people in a mode they feel their career is advancing and growing and they as an indi - vidual are advancing. Only time will tell if we were successful in doing that. We tried to keep people busy with training and di- viding duties up so everyone got some of the more advanced work to do. Everyone also had to do some of the less attractive work. There weren't a lot of raises or bo- nuses — bonuses have been reduced mas- sively and so there's a lot of that that creates a bit of discontent, but for the most part I think people were happy to be employed and to be relatively busy. That was good. When the industry gets busy, then oppor - tunities arise, and if people believe the oppor- tunities elsewhere are stronger, then some players in the industry will lose some people. My philosophy to managing an in-house legal team is to trust individuals to man- age themselves to the extent that doing so makes sense. MEG's legal team is a group of driven professionals who want to not only do well but also be seen as doing well, which means they don't need to be micro-man - aged. However, that intention must be bal- anced against a need to provide assistance and guidance where that is helpful, and for the GC to also be well informed regarding projects being performed and issues that may arise. In my view, this can most often be accomplished through information flow from team members to the GC, rather than close-quarter oversight. 5. HOW DO YOU APPROACH MANAGING THE WORK YOU DO WITH EXTERNAL COUNSEL? We haven't done a lot of requests for pro- posals. We have three law firms we use on a regular basis for a fair amount of work. We tend to use no fewer than three firms so we can avoid any conflicts that may arise. Recently, [we] went to market for bid on a specialized intellectual property matter and surprisingly had three national firms come back to us in generally the same price range. They had local people aligned for the matter as well as expertise in Toronto and Ottawa where there is a lot of IP expertise. We have also had to use some U.S.-based firms for things such as external advice for independent board members, but it's a situ - ation where we pay the fee for the outside party. I think in those cases going forward we will be asking the firms involved to fol- low a more set-fee structure. IH Visit gpllm.law.utoronto.ca Questions? gpllm@utoronto.ca Apply today. ONE YEAR | PART-TIME | FOR LAWYERS AND BUSINESS LEADERS Master the Law. Canada's leading law school offers a graduate degree in four unique streams: Business Law Canadian Law in a Global Context Innovation, Law and Technology Law of Leadership ntitled-5 1 2017-08-17 3:02 PM PHOTO: MEG ENERGY

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