The Lawyers Weekly - Inside Councel, Fall 2011

Gaming paradise
Story by Jeremy Hainsworth
Photography by Alistair Eagle

MERGING WITH A BURNABY, B.C., hillside, the sprawling Electronic Arts video-gaming company campus covers 382,000 square feet over five floors. The company’s west coast legal team enjoys office space in cubes with views of B.C.’s North Shore mountains. The campus is the workplace for 1,200 employees out of the 8,000 employees of the company headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. Of the total, more than 100 are legal staff. EA develops, publishes and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet. Phase 1 of the Burnaby complex opened in 1999 and phase 2 seven years later. Natural light from more than 3,500 panels of glass permeates the work environment and floors are themed to represent the basic elements of a video game-motion, pixels, texture and light. Burnaby, B.C.-based senior counsel Keith Darvell says working at EA is “a dream job.” The legal staff works on issues such as mergers and acquisitions, insurance, indemnity, intellectual property issues, trade-mark, copyright and licensing. “It’s a very balanced lifestyle,” Darvell says. “It’s 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. which, considering the hours most lawyers work is pretty good. I like working with creative people. The legal considerations don’t run the business; the business runs the business.”