If you received information that your organization was going to be the subject of an investigation by a regulator or law enforcement agency, what would be your first reaction? Sit back and wait for them to knock on the door with a search warrant? Blow it off, hoping it ultimately won’t go anywhere, or would you immediately start an internal investigation of your own?

When Herb Pinder Jr. first got involved with company boards more than 25 years ago, the identity of directors had more to do with the chief executive officer’s circle of friends than the wishes of its shareholders. “The CEO at company X would get his buddy over at company Y to come on his board and chair the compensation committee, and then the guy at company Y would return the favour,” he says. “It was all very cozy, and it was nice when you got on the circuit, but it was very clubby and inappropriate, both with respect to the law, and ethically.”

Properly managing legal spending remains the top concern for leaders of Canadian legal departments, as they try to strike a balance between what they spend and what they get in return.

If Canadian in-house counsel did not feel overwhelmed enough in their role protecting their companies’ interests, a new threat reached their radar screens over the course of the past year: shareholder activism.

In April and May, Walker Digital LLC filed over 20 separate patent infringement suits against more than 100 major companies. Walker Digital owns a patent portfolio of hundreds of issued patents and applications in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. The patent portfolio covers a wide range of technologies including online advertising, gaming, online auctions, mapping services, vending, credit cards, entertainment, and e-commerce.

With recent Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission decisions that Internet service providers must meet the increasing needs of broadband users as well as provide accessible services for declining landline phone users, telecommunications sector companies are looking for ways to find a happy medium.

Gone are the days when in-house counsel only managed external counsel. As companies emerge from the recession, the role of in-house counsel has expanded. Not only are corporate counsel doing more legal work in-house, they are also actively engaged on the business side.

In-house lawyers have told me several times about particular points in their careers in which they sat down and asked themselves: “What is my role? Where do I stand? How do I make the world a better place?” This is not unique to lawyers, but perhaps because members of this community are smart, well educated, and hard-working, they probably worry about this more than others.

Lawyers are far too risk-averse to make it as entrepreneurs. They’re a bunch of naysayers, out to kibosh or toss cold water on every business decision. They’re obsessed with details and fail to see the big picture. They lack the bold vision, marketing skills, and financial savvy to lead a company. The legal department is where deals go to die or to be mangled beyond recognition. If you want to look for the negative stereotypes lawyers labour under, they are everywhere. There might be a little bit of truth to them, but today’s lawyers aren’t just risk managers. They’re business enablers, who are not only skilled at identifying issues, but also at finding solutions. And a growing number of lawyers turned CEOs are demonstrating that members of the legal profession have what it takes to climb to the top of the corporate ladder and sit in the big chair.

Illustration: Steve Munday

The growth in international trade has made the world smaller, more interconnected, and more complex. It has taken longer, and has received less public attention, but that same dynamic is also occurring when it comes to cross-border government procurement.