Canadian Lawyer InHouse

RIDING WINDS CHANGE THE OF L ike so many general counsel these days, Nicola- Jane McNeill is managing in a climate of fast-paced growth and increasing demands from the business units she works with, while at the same time responding to the expectations of external stakeholders. The business of parking is big and ever evolving and the legal team at Vancouver-based Impark is part of the effort to grow the company that faces cross-border challenges as it has a large presence in Canada and the United States — 200 cities in a country where the regulatory environment is more complex. As we were putting this story together, McNeill's position in the legal department changed when she was promoted to senior vice president and general counsel, which will have her taking an even larger role and closer look at the challenge of balancing risk with efficiencies. Like McNeill, so many in-house counsel these days are often managing through growth of business, growth of regulatory challenge and even recovery, in the case of Grant Borbridge, senior vice president legal and general counsel at MEG Energy in Calgary. After a three-year slump in the oil sector, there are finally signs of life and some stability in the oil and gas sector. This means while Borbridge was successful in keeping his legal team of eight together through the downturn, they now face the immediate demands of investors who have high expectations for growth. In that three-year period, the sector also saw a growing tide of demand for greater transparency around environmental issues. With that has come increased regulatory requirements that will keep the MEG Energy legal department busy in the coming year. Growth of regulatory issues also pose challenges to those in the insurance sector and Martha Binks, general counsel at Allstate Canada in Markham, Ont., is constantly evaluating the allocation of her resources for both demands of the company as it grows and as legislative and regulatory matters increase workloads. Her approach is to insert herself in the process from the early stage with the business units and the result is a more efficient overall outcome for the business. In Montreal, David Felicissimo, general counsel of Valnet Inc., is juggling all the challenges of a fast-paced online collection of popular website brands that are content rich and therefore demanding in the realm of intellectual property issues as well as policies set out by the likes of Google, Facebook and YouTube. Operating in that realm means there is little time for the legal department to react to new policies from these online behemoths when they make changes that can often happen suddenly and without much warning. Through all the change, a common theme with these senior in-house leaders is that while they are bringing more work into their departments with ever-increasingly specialized staff, they also rely heavily on their external partners for complicated work that they need specific expertise on. As several of them pointed out, working cross-border with outside counsel poses its own unique set of challenges, but there is an increased focus on fee arrangements becoming the norm, not the exception. I hope you enjoy this, our fifth edition of the View, presented in conjunction with Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. I think you will find that the common thread with these four general counsel is that they all maintain a big picture view of the risks and challenges of the business while at the same time having an "enabling" perspective day to day to make sure the legal teams are providing real value to the companies they support. BY JENNIFER BROWN Life is never dull in-house; just ask these four general counsel from Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. Their business units are pushing for growth and they are there to answer the call. They tell us what's in store for their legal departments in the year ahead.

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