Mark Le Blanc is General Counsel at TVO, where he is responsible for overseeing legal matters and balancing corporate risk. He is a key player on the strategic team as TVO shifts from a legacy broadcaster to a digital product organization. He has a BA in Economics from Queen’s and a JD from University of Victoria. His background is in IP and media law. He is a business first lawyer and is relied upon for his judgement. His focus has always been to leverage his legal skills and experience to advance the business of the organization. He is most interested in the evolution of the business of law, and in particular the evolving business/legal role of in-house counsel.
External counsel can hone their skills as experts in an area of law, while in-house can hone these for an organization or industry, writes Mark Le Blanc
Work is piling up. How do you decide what to keep and what to send to outside counsel? Today, those are no longer the only options. You can also now use legal service providers who are relentlessly focused on process and efficiency. Options are always good. But, we are still back to the initial question: How do you decide what to keep and what to sent to outside counsel or to an LSP?
Though the rewards can be significant, implementing new systems and processes always seems like such a massive challenge. And it is. It is hard work to determine what the current process is, where it meets and does not meet your organizational objectives, and then to map out the desired process. Once done, it can be harder yet to implement your new system and process that will improve the product or service delivery.
Many articles have been written on the issue of risk management and I do not propose to write the seminal piece on the subject. Rather, my point is that as in-house counsel you need to look at risk as organizational risk, not simply legal risk. To do this you must know your organization’s tolerance for risk and the return on resource investment to manage its risks. Without looking at the RORI for risk management, you are just measuring identifiable risks against some arbitrary standard (typically legal) of what is acceptable risk.
