Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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39 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE MARCH 2018 L a w D e p a r t m e n t M a n a g e m e n t Her role is an emerging one. Legal op- erations used to be one that existed only in large departments focused on efficiencies and effectiveness. It's now often the first hire after the general counsel in a new le- gal department. "The value and impact of this role is being recognized and the voice of the client has really started to come to- gether and demanding we change the legal industry," she said. Now, when the legal department at Google has a piece of work that needs to go external, a series of questions are asked: Does it need to go to a law firm? Can it go to an alternative services provider? Can it be done in-house? Can it be automated? Can technology satisfy the problem? "There's just a whole plethora of options now where 10 years ago there weren't," she said. The main question is whether the work is matched with the right resource — Google looks at what is needed, the value provided and the options out there and they then match the type of work with the right provider. "Whether it's working with an alternative service provider or managing internal processes or whether leveraging knowledge management and artificial intelligence to do work on contracts or patents — everything we do in the legal department now . . . we're starting to break it down and see if we're getting the best value," she said. And while for the last 20 years or more in- house legal departments have been steadily building, for the first time it seems there is a hint some may be ripe for replacement by an outsourced model. On the same panel at LegalWeek, Dan Reed, chief executive officer of UnitedLex, spoke about a recent initiative it announced in December 2017 with DXC Technology, a global IT services company. DXC announced it had chosen UnitedLex to support its global law function "transformation." The announcement followed the April 2017 formation of DXC, which brought together Computer Sciences Corp. and the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Under the five-year agreement, UnitedLex will help create one unified, strategic legal team to support DXC. Working closely with DXC's general coun - sel Bill Deckelman, UnitedLex established a platform of technologies, lawyers, contract and commercial professionals, as well as sub- ject matter experts to support DXC's business strategy and provide "greater accountability across the entire legal ecosystem." Primary focus areas will include client transactions of all sizes, litigation, immigration and legal operations. The UnitedLex team supporting DXC is comprised of more than 250 "senior professional resources." It's indeed a transformational deal, not just for DXC but for the legal profession as a whole — one not accustomed to seeing an outsourcing model for legal services, especially in an age when many in-house departments rival the size of some law firms in Canada. Reed is a tough one to convince that real change is happening in the profession. "Most change to me in legal has been largely irrelevant," he said. "There's a lot of noise in legal, but when you peel it back, it's generally completely irrelevant." However, he noted that in the last 18 months UnitedLex has signed up deals that are "dial moving" for the organizations they support. "To me, that's been the biggest change — procurement/strategic sourcing is getting more active," he said, noting the deals are getting larger. What we're really seeing more of is the demand for change than the actual change. We're not at the tipping point yet — we are getting there — everyone is pushing towards that and at some point something is going to break. MARY SHEN O'CARROLL, Google Inc.