Canadian Lawyer InHouse

23 CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM/INHOUSE MAY/JUNE 2018 $1 million. In response, Aviva Canada said it would not pay her any damages. It went to court and Aviva was ordered to pay $237,000 to cover the legal costs she incurred in win- ning a $20,000 settlement. "The Ontario legislation states that a plaintiff has to have a serious and permanent impairment in order to recover damages for pain and suffering in a lawsuit like this, so af- ter reviewing the case — and we review each case on the facts — the position we took was we didn't think the plaintiff was going to meet that definition," says Furlong. Evans had run trials when it was Aviva Le- gal services, but in the year and a half before the beginning of Aviva Trial Lawyers, there hadn't been too many trials managed in-house. In branding Aviva Trial lawyers and building the structure that allows trial ca- pability and allows mentorship, people who are in the senior practice counsel role were chosen because they had a long career al- ready doing trials. "We hired people who knew how to do trials and were at a stage in their career where they wanted to share that knowledge," says Furlong. "We want people who are enthusiastic about doing trials. We even say you won't thrive here unless you're prepared to do trials." A big foundation of the operating model was Furlong's experience in private practice. She learned and was mentored for six years at Regan Desjardins LLP. Building the litigation team is part of Aviva's push to address differently the litiga- tion that comes through the door. "We don't want to be accused of just being lawyers who write cheques and settle cases; we want to demonstrate the ultimate skill of a lawyer, which is to go into a courtroom and conduct a trial and have a good result. That has been the knock on in-house over the years: Can they go that final step? We've been proving the capability of doing that," says Furlong. "There is a particular breed of lawyer we're looking for and it has to be a match be- cause we're looking for the same thing. What we provide is the pure practice of law. You don't have to docket, you don't have to worry about where the next file is coming from and it does not matter if the case is open for one day or five years," she says. "If I can settle on the first day and that's the right result, we will pay it. If I look at it and there is no valid claim, no liability and no proper dam- ages, then Aviva will back you to the bitter end. If you're going to take those principled approaches with files and get what you think is the right result, you have to have lawyers capable of doing trial." Evans and Furlong refer to the environ- ment as a "luxurious place to practise law" because lawyers don't have to worry about how much time they put into a file. She says companies want to watch what they are spending on lawyers and have good external counsel and get the right result, but sending two lawyers on a trial is just not af- fordable, while it is for the internal team. For every trial Aviva Trial Lawyers does, there is a lead counsel and a second chair. The litigation team also went from offices to open concept. "That gave me nightmares, but I actually enjoy it now and you could not put me in an office. I love it. We have a vibe here — it's a good energy. They collaborate and share knowledge and the fact you don't have dockets means you're more generous with your time. In private practice, I always passed on sharing my knowledge because the lawyers I learned from taught me so much." Furlong says she's trying to get more sophis- ticated about how they understand workload and what they are costing on a file compared to external lawyers. "We do compare our- selves, but since we're just in the third year of Aviva Trial Lawyers, that would be something we're trying to accomplish this year — mak- ing sure we're comparing ourselves to external counsel. You don't only want to be cheaper, though, you want to be just as good and we're seeing that. We're seeing great results." What has the evolution of the litigation team done to its relationship with outside counsel? "The reality is that it is less work for them, but there are files that need their expertise that we cannot handle; we may not have that area of expertise. There is always a place for them, so while there may be [fewer] firms handling Aviva's work, I think the relationships with those firms are still really strong," she says. Right now, the accident benefits group does about 50 per cent of Aviva's litigation and 36 per cent of the tort work in 2017. "Aviva is a big company and there is lots of work. Everyone is best served if the head of Aviva Trial Lawyers is working hand in hand with the head of our law firms that we choose to have on our list and hand in hand with the head of claims," she says. The rest of the company also leverages the knowledge of the department. "Our GTA West group sits as 'duty counsel' once a week — one of the lawyers goes and sits with the claims people and is there to answer ques- tions. We do presentations to brokers about risk avoidance such as how your documents end up in litigation," she says. In next six months, Aviva Trial Lawyers has 49 files on the trial list and, in Toronto, all of the trials have been put on the June trial list. This spring, Furlong wants to do a paper- less trial as a pilot project. "If I can show the business case and the benefits we will get in terms of customer service, and lawyers [be- ing] more engaged — then I find they do in- vest in us. We need to get paperless." She also plans on 2018 being the year the department's data demonstrates just how ef- fective the litigation team has become since being formalized as Aviva Trial Lawyers. Evans recalls when he first started working in-house at Royal Sun Alliance in 1999 and insurers were just starting to hire lawyers in what was largely a claims examining function. In the past, most of the litigation was handed to external counsel. "I have dedicated my career to proving in-house lawyers can be as good as external lawyers and that's what motivated me to do trials," he says. "I have done 10 trials as an in- house lawyer and have seen a lot of changes in our department, but it really kicked into gear when we got the resources we needed. We know our in-house department is saving Aviva money." IH I have dedicated my career to proving in-house lawyers can be as good as external lawyers and that's what motivated me to do trials. BILL EVANS, Aviva Trial Lawyers

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