Fears that the U.S. capital markets are failing to land their share of global IPOs have U.S. legislators and the business community re-evaluating the corporate governance and enforcement controls put in place following the market scandals earlier this decade. That spells good news for foreign issuers and Canadian companies that inter-list on U.S. exchanges. But is it good news for shareholders?

Of all the challenges faced by corporate counsel, one is particularly daunting. It’s the nightmare of class action lawsuits. Increasingly, plaintiff lawyers from coast to coast are turning up the heat, and the odds of a corporation getting targeted are good and getting better. But Canada has no national class action clearing centre to deal with the chaos of multiple suits in multiple jurisdictions, and distil them into one action, in one place. That means corporations often find themselves putting out fires across the country.

As senior vice-president and general counsel for Suncor Energy Inc., Terrence Hopwood must have a comprehensive understanding of the company’s extensive operations. That’s no small feat when your employer is an expanding energy giant experiencing a global oil and gas boom.

The in-house legal market is enduring strong and steady growth, as banks, insurers, and power companies have replaced transportation, oil and gas, and trust companies as the private sector’s top employers of internal legal talent in Canada over the past quarter century.

As North American securities regulators crack down on corporate fraud, a cornerstone legal principle, solicitor-client privilege, has been caught in the crossfire. Today, in-house counsel wear huge targets on their backs.  While the pressure tactics are not as severe in Canada, they still exist and in-house counsel are walking a privilege tightrope.

Are you spending more than your law department budget allows and bringing down the wrath of your CEO? Here are five tips for putting together a killer law department budget that will keep you in the good graces of your finance department, placate that CEO, and ensure your external law firm understands your company is not a money pit.

At some point in your career as in-house counsel, you may be called in to help a company deal with a brewing media crisis. Do you know what to do and are you prepared? Our experts weigh in on what you must do when the news trucks roll up to the gates.

INHOUSE canvassed managing partners and senior corporate lawyers at firms across the country to identify some of the year’s biggest newsmaking in-house counsel. Bell Globemedia Inc.’s André Serero takes this year’s top honours.

Keeping abreast of tax changes is never easy at the best of times, so INHOUSE canvassed leading tax practitioners, asking them for the top-five pitfalls that can trip companies up and draw unwanted attention from the tax man.

Microsoft Canada's Michael Eisen says the key to building a good corporate law department is being pragmatic and letting people do the job they were hired to do.