In-House Counsel - Fall 2010

over the past decade, the global transportation company
has hired more than 50 lawyers, for a total of 130, work-
ing in 17 countries. And while Daniel Desjardins has no
plans to aggressively expand his in-house legal depart-
ment, the senior legal officer does intend to bolster his
intellectual property team, if only to better protect the
company’s assets and know-how.
“Globalization has changed the way money is spent
on legal services, and the way the legal department is
managed,” said Desjardins, Bombardier’s senior vice
president and general counsel. “A lot of time is spent on
governance, on human resource issues, on management
of the team. Lawyers are no longer in the same footprint
all around the general counsel on the same floor. It’s
more and more global. The legal department is not all
centralized. So you‘ve got to make sure you’ve got the
right support. Lawyers need to be pretty solid individuals
from the start.”
t’s no surprise then that effectively managing far-
flung legal departments requires building a top-
quality team. Given the growing complexity of
the projects Bombardier tackles, usually spread
out over many jurisdictions, Desjardins is always on
the lookout for well-rounded, experienced lawyers who
have a solid business and legal background, capable of
demonstrating leadership and realize that “law is not a
silo” but that it encompasses accounting, engineering,
manufacturing, operational and even political consid-
erations. Equally important, the person should be adept
at dealing with people at all levels of the organization as
well as with clients, outside counsel and regulatory bod-
ies. In short, a self-starter, with a model level of matu-
rity and professionalism, adds Stock. “When you come
inside, 95 per cent of your time, you’re working with
the business units,” explained Stock. “And that means
you’re usually working alone, supported if you need to
be from time to time by people from the in-house de-
partment or a law firm.”
If hiring local talent, general counsel must be pre-
pared to take steps to ensure that the lawyer becomes
familiar with the firm and its culture, points out David
Allgood, executive vice-president and general counsel of
the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). RBC generally invites
new local hires to the head office periodically. If, on the
other hand, RBC opens a new office abroad, it tends to
send seasoned veterans from its headquarters in Toronto
to acquaint local talent with the inner workings of the
financial institution.
While general counsel tend to share similar visions
over the ideal employee working at a far-flung legal de-
partment, differences inevitably crop up over how to best
structure the reporting lines for their international legal
teams. At Industrial Alliance, which has subsidiaries in
a number of financial services sectors in addition to life
and health insurance, decision-making has been decen-
tralized, with in-house lawyers providing advice to their
business lines, with the exception of issues relating to in-

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