Jennifer Brown is the former managing editor of Canadian Lawyer InHouse and Law Times. She has been a business magazine writer and editor for over 10 years covering the IT, occupational health and safety and security sectors for the business-to-business press prior to arriving at InHouse. She was also a newspaper reporter for five years in the Greater Toronto Area covering health care and education before going to work at a daily news online portal reporting on the technology sector.
When it comes to conducting due diligence in mergers and acquisitions, it’s all about looking for risks in a haystack of data, thanks in large part to the proliferation of documents and information to review for a proposed deal.
Amid the hype and ongoing dialogue around the future of law and innovation in the legal profession, the reality is many small law departments in Canada still feel effective legal advice and suitable fee arrangements come not from new service delivery models but through good management and long-term cultivation of relationships with external counsel.
In the summer of 2011, I joined the Canadian Lawyer and Law Times team at Thomson Reuters and in the space of about seven days attended the American Bar Association conference (it was held in Toronto that year) and the Canadian Bar Association conference in Halifax. It was a baptism by fire.
When people talk about innovation in the legal market, a couple of themes inevitably come to mind: technology and a change in the way clients obtain legal services. But at the crux of all of this is not tech or billable hours — it’s about the people and how they will need to adapt to change.
Jean-Francois Denis recalls the first time he asked for data from the legal department at Bombardier Inc. when he was trying to figure out what was being spent and how much work was being sent to external law firms.
In an industry that is struggling on a daily basis to interpret the regulations as set out by Health Canada, those in the cannabis sector work each day to determine if what they are doing complies with what the regulator has set out.
Like many companies in Quebec these days, the Metro Supply Chain Group is growing rapidly as demand for its fundamental logistics services rises to meet the global movement of goods internationally.
For the fourth year in a row, Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP took the top spot in the Acritas brand index, but McCarthy Tétrault LLP leads when it comes to recognition by in-house counsel that it has embraced innovation.
Corporate counsel are not currently represented as benchers at the Law Society of Ontario, but three Toronto-based lawyers running in this election are hoping to bring the in-house voice to Convocation.
Appointment viewing is rare these days, but class action lawyers and fans who remember CBC’s Street Legal may want to put a reminder in the calendar for March 4.
