CANLIF Legal Department Roundtable: April 13th, 2022

The Canadian Legal Innovation Forum, in association with iManage, will be hosting an exclusive virtual roundtable on October 5th, 2021 focused on how legal departments are delivering value for their organizations.

The purpose of the roundtable is to gather a small group of legal department leaders to discuss key challenges they are facing, the role of legal operations in delivering efficiency and value for their organizations, how they are collaborating both internally and externally to support innovation, and how they are adjusting to a hybrid work environment.

The roundtable will have approximately 15 participants from legal departments across Canada and the discussion will be under Chatham House Rule. It will be underpinned by findings from the recent CANLIF Legal Department Survey as well as the recent Forrester/iManage TEI Study: Building a business case for modern document management.

Structure:

Accreditation:

Law Society of Ontario: This program contains 2 hours of Professionalism Content.
Law Society of BC: This program is accredited for 2 hours of CPD

Topics for discussion:

The rising importance of legal operations for legal departments

Having a legal operations function supporting the legal department is increasingly important in a complex operating environment. Legal operations teams manage business processes, activities and professionals by applying business and technical practices for the delivery of legal services. While the function is prominent in the UK, US and Australia it’s less so in Canada with only 38% of legal departments reporting having an official legal ops function (CANLIF Legal Department Innovation Survey). However, we expect the legal operations trend to continue to gather steam in Canada over the near to medium term. For this section of the discussion, we’ll focus on the following areas when it comes to legal operations:

  • Priorities for legal departments and the role that legal operations plays in supporting them

  • Barriers to innovation in legal departments and how they can be addressed

  • Making the business case for legal operations in organizations

  • Demonstrating ROI from the legal operations function

Collaboration is the new innovation

In our recent CANLIF Legal Department Innovation Report, Collaboration ranked as the second highest priority for legal departments’ core competencies (second only to contract drafting and review). In this part of the discussion, we’ll focus on best practices when it comes to legal departments collaborating with other parts of their organizations to deliver value. We'll also focus on how successful collaboration works in partnership with external legal sector service providers. And finally, we’ll consider the evolving and increasing role that technology plays in supporting collaboration. 

Moving towards the next normal - working in a hybrid environment

The pandemic marked a major shift in that remote work became the norm. Once organizations managed the initial transition, they faced issues around managing a flood of digital information, ensuring privacy and compliance for remote workers and managing burnout. Now, as we move towards a hybrid work environment, many of these challenges exist but they have also created opportunities. In this discussion, we will focus on the new challenges and opportunities facing legal departments and best practices for managing them.

Roundtable Chairs

Paula Pepin, Founder, LexGo

I am a lawyer, yes, but first and foremost I am business person who was an executive for several hyper-growth companies over the last 20 years. I created LexGO because I have been through hyper-growth and know what is needed in order to scale a company.

When it comes to legal services, I also firmly believe the traditional legal industry needs to be disrupted. In the era of the gig economy, the arrival of new and innovative legal service providers and the rapid advancement of technologies, legal departments have to re-think the way they provide and scale their services.

Having been a GC myself, I know how days are filled with meetings and emergencies and how difficult it is to find time to dedicate to strategic work. If you choose to partner with LexGO, we will help you become strategic. Working in the background, our commitment will be to create valuable and tangible deliverables which will make you shine in front of your leadership team.

Learn more about LexGO at: www.lexgo.ca

Andrew Bowyer, Founder, The Canadian Legal Innovation Forum (ADB Insights)

Andrew Bowyer is the founder of ADB Insights - a Vancouver based media and consulting company. ADB Insights convenes forums, workshops and digitally based platforms focused on change in the professional services sector - including the Canadian Legal Innovation Forum and The Canadian Estates Forum.

Andrew also provides consulting services for companies’ business development, strategy and content. Andrew has also worked as an editorial consultant/writer for Bloomberg Law for projects focused on the US legal market.

Andrew spent the first 13 years of his career in London and New York in globally focused roles at the Financial Times, Bloomberg and a strategy consulting firm focused on the global legal sector. He returned to Vancouver to set up ADB Insights in 2018.