Canadian Lawyer InHouse

MAY/JUNE 2018 20 INHOUSE T he evolution of in-house le- gal departments is increas- ingly including the addition of more litigators to the mix, and more companies are look- ing to hire lawyers who not only have strong file experience but who are also keen to robe up and go to court. Canadian insurance companies in par- ticular, such as Aviva Canada, are also building stronger teams in large numbers. In the last two years, Aviva has rebranded and grown its internal litigation team to more than 80 lawyers. Companies such as Telus, BMO and some public sector organizations (see page 22) have been focused for some time on strengthening how their internal litigation teams manage files with external counsel. "The nature of litigation matters we are facing has changed if we compare to 10 years ago," says Delbie Desharnais, associate gen- eral counsel, litigation at Telus. "We're now facing much more class actions, IP claims and significant litigation matters, so we have got a pretty diverse portfolio — all the gen- eral civil and commercial litigation including the claims litigation and employment litiga- tion is spread across the country for Telus." While Telus still uses significant external counsel to manage its litigation portfolio, it has been working with its outside partners to develop a more streamlined approach. "I think we all share the same goal of suc- cessfully and cost-efficiently defending and prosecuting the litigation files we have," says Desharnais. "We insource all the pre- litigation work, the employment litigation matters up to trial and, in some cases, we also in-source the initial steps of general commercial matters — making sure we use that knowledge of internal clients and cor- porate priorities." Desharnais' team will conduct the discov- eries and bring the file ready for trial and outsource the trial because it has a lean liti- gation team. "We have reduced our external spend by trying to get added value services from external counsel through the way we split the work," she says. At BMO Financial Group, there are more than 20 members in the litigation practice group including litigators and e-discovery specialists. There are three to five litigators per team. "To me, what's extraordinary isn't in terms of a shift or change in number of litigators but more in how we have evolved and innovated and pushed our external partners to do the same," says Charlene Yaneza, associate gen- eral counsel, Global Litigations, Capital Mar- kets Legal at BMO Financial Group, who is based in Chicago but handles a global portfo- lio. "We don't sit still; innovation is a priority to do things better and more efficiently. "For litigation, we have developed a pretty sophisticated infrastructure in terms of case management tools and reporting capabilities and brought expertise in-house for activities that would have been held by external coun- sel," she says. "For example, the e-discovery group has been able to bring in activities related to document collection, managing litigation holds and document retention pro- cesses. Where we do use external counsel we have been able to cut costs by doing legwork LITIGATION TRANSFORMATION IN-HOUSE BY JENNIFER BROWN Insurance companies and other legal departments are beefing up their in-house litigation teams with an eye to gaining greater control in defending matters and pursuing issues proactively on behalf of the organizations they represent.

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