56 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MARCH/APRIL 2018
IN-HOUSE ADVISOR
A company's first in-house
counsel is faced with a daunting
proposition. He or she must
be able to quickly absorb the
corporate culture, while holding
the line on risky business
BY BRIAN BURTON ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID SENIOR
YOU'RE THE NEW GENERAL COUNSEL, or lawyer
for all occasions, at All-Purpose Enterprises Inc. Your title hasn't
been precisely worked out yet, in part because you're the first in-
house counsel they've ever had.
It's a growing company with expanding legal requirements —
or they wouldn't have hired you. Your first priority is to "hit the
ground running," as the CEO so enthusiastically told you just
moments before showing you to your new office and leaving you
to "get settled in." And now all you need to know is what she
imagined "running" might look like.
Should you set up your office, hire a paralegal, read board
minutes, tour operating facilities, review corporate policies or
risk assessments? All of the above? Or did the CEO have some-
thing else entirely in mind? You're not quite sure what the ex-
ecutive and the board of directors expect, and they aren't either.
Time will tell. But by then, success will either be firmly in hand
or well and truly out of reach.
Inside, Looking Around
Harpreet Sidhu is General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and
Privacy Officer for Toronto-based Pethealth Inc., a pet insur-
ance provider in Canada, the US, UK and Germany. She was
hired in 2013, aer articling with a small general-practice firm,
to manage Pethealth's legal work across the international busi-
ness. "When I first started at Pethealth, we had no other in-
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