LEGAL
I recently spent a Sunday acting as an executive in residence at the Business Leadership Program for In-House Counsel run by the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association and Rotman School of Management. This seminar was being led by one of the most innovative and talented leaders in the legal profession, Ken Fredeen, the general counsel at Deloitte Canada. In this particular module, we were discussing the role of the general counsel. Some of the key issues included:
There were some great insights shared by the students and Fredeen regarding the key attributes or strategies that will assist a GC – especially a GC new to his or her role – to be successful. In this article, I am sharing some of the ideas and insights that were raised by the class and that I found particularly helpful:
To be an effective GC, you must be a strategic business partner. This means not only becoming involved with the business at the strategic and executive level but also having the tools to know and understand the practice and theory behind the business. Every student in that class on Sunday, by enrolling in the program, understood the importance of this point.
An effective GC must consider and properly balance all sources of legal resources available to him or her to address changing demands and workloads. This means considering and finding an optimal balance between the resourcing options available to him or her. These include the use of external counsel, contract staff augmentation, remote hiring/outsourcing options, etc.
A GC and his or her legal team must have at least weekly face-to-face team meetings, where the members of the team share what projects they are working on, recommended strategies, best practices, updates on their workload, and finally, their wins, losses, and concerns with each other.
Although the GC is often part of the executive team as noted in the point above, he or she must also represent the best interests of the company and the shareholders, which may not always be aligned with the interests of the executive team. Finding the right balance in understanding this fit and dealing with potential conflicts between the two is key for a long and successful career.
As part of the reading materials, the class also discussed the article, “7 Pieces of Advice for a New General Counsel,” written by Marc E. Manly, which provides great advice regarding enhancing the performance of a GC. I highly recommend this read for new general counsel. Below, I expand on three of these tips that I think are especially important to consider.
This is very important as it allows you to track and monitor the legal spend on external counsel. But, more importantly, maintaining control also helps ensure you are obtaining consistent advice and that the advice and the knowledge obtained is properly distributed and utilized by others. At the end of the day, the legal department is responsible for any legal matters that arise from business decisions taken, starting off on the right foot, and ensuring advice received is proper before a matter “blows up.”
I am as guilty as anyone of this: When critical and urgent matters arise, the e-mail inbox quickly fills up and it takes you days to get out of the e-mail jail. As a common human response, you fight or take flight. This means that priority e-mails are addressed as soon as possible, but others linger and fall through the cracks. The article provides the following useful rule that can be communicated to the business group: Any communication received before noon got a reply by the end of that day; any received after noon was answered by the next morning.
The writer also recommends that you respond within these parameters, even if the response is initially a pro forma “I have your e-mail, but I am tied up in another matter until Monday – can your matter wait until then, or can I get a colleague to help on this?” This makes a lot of sense, as it not only shows responsiveness but also creates a way of filtering the time sensitive matters from those that are less urgent.
As general counsel, we are often asked to deal with a broad range of commercial issues ranging from tax, competition, labor and employment to franchise legislation. It is imperative that you get comfortable with letting the client know that you may not have the answer, but you will get it. It is better to answer this way than to make a mistake.
I hope these tips help as you transition into the GC role or become a better GC.
Fernando Garcia is the General Counsel for Nissan Canada, Inc. Fernando's duties include providing strategic and legal advice on Canada-wide dealer operations, labor relations and employment law, government affairs, and all general legal matters. He holds an MIR from the University of Toronto, and LLB/BCL from McGill, and recently completed an MBA at Wilfrid Laurier University.
This column originally appeared on the Canadian Lawyer InHouse website. Canadian Lawyer InHouse was the first magazine in Canada to solely serve corporate counsel. Each week it comprehensively covers the Canadian market online and in print.
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