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Day One: Sunday, April 25, 2010

2:00-2:45

R. Scott Mahoney
Deputy General Counsel and Chief FERC Compliance Officer
Iberdrola USA

Leading the Charge to Create Strategic Opportunities from your Corporate Compliance Policies

Compliance is not simply about following the rules—it is about deriving value from changes in regulatory policy. The need for general counsel to utilize sound legal judgment in assuring the organization meets regulatory requirements remains a staple of the position, but your evolving role as a business partner demands going to the next level. Do not restrict your position to rule-following: spur true growth by responding to legislation and regulation with a strategy that demands proof of value. Interactively explore the strategies for drawing value from compliance:

  • Recognize your organization’s points of leverage and advantage within the regulatory landscape.
  • Forecast legislative developments to prepare for anticipated changes and minimize transitional hazard.
  • Align compliance strategy with future plans for expansion, product development and internal operations to proactively position the organization for value.
  • Incorporate compliance expectations into successful management of outside counsel and consultants.
2:45-3:30

Ned Greene
Vice President
Interim General Counsel and Secretary
NCR

Employing Continuous Improvement Practices To Develop a More Capable, Cost-Effective Legal Department

General counsel are increasingly recognizing the value in strengthening the capabilities of the in-house legal department, but in pursuing this internal department of greater scope, executives will experience the limitations, inefficiencies and bottlenecks common to other corporate divisions. Your success hinges on developing a way to overcome these challenges as you position your corporate counsel on a path of continuous improvement. With a streamlined, value-driven approach to legal on the mind, how do you best overcome these challenges? How do you incorporate defect-limiting practices like six sigma into your evolving legal department? Prepare your game plan for developing a higher-quality legal department as you discuss value-driven practices:

  • Apply an assessment of the defects and their impact on productivity to the legal operations model.
  • Pursue a division of labor that maximizes cost-efficiency, utilizing in-house counsel and more targeted outside firms.
  • Identify the functional areas most crucial to streamlining the legal department and assess how their improvement affects the business.
  • In the spirit of partnering with outside solutions providers, incorporate their tasks and challenges into six sigma strategy.
  • Minimize wasteful areas and bottlenecks to promote continuously uninhibited growth.
3:30-4:15

Chris Miller
Vice President, Employee Relations and Associate General Counsel
Southern Company

CONCURRENT 1-A:
Carving an Advantageous Legal Position in an Era of Pro-Labor Reform

As if navigating the realm of labor relations were not challenging enough, legal executives presently face the additional hurdle of addressing impending, yet largely uncertain changes in the dynamic between the employer and the components of the labor force. The idea of balancing the numerous, pressing concerns of today with the anticipated developments of tomorrow has historically overwhelmed corporate counsel, but as you strive to protect your organization’s leverage against an increasingly powerful big labor, you absolutely must implement a more driven, comprehensive platform for addressing developing labor relations issues. From compensation practices to union negotiation strategies to labor-related litigation, arm your corporation with the tools needed to resolve conflicts in the present while protecting against inefficiencies in the future.

  • Implementing a successful method of forecasting labor relations developments that readies the organization to manage change.
  • Understanding how the ongoing approach to labor relations conflicts with the expectations of new legislation, assuring an absence and conflict and issue spillover if and when such changes take place.
  • Developing a more efficient labor relations platform that emphasizes preemptive, beneficial negotiation while preserving the organization’s ability to successfully litigate such issues.
  • Rethinking the management and employee structure to minimize the potential for legal hazard while developing an immunity against sudden regulatory change.
3:30-4:15

Mary Clark
Vice President, Law and Deputy General Counsel
LexisNexis

CONCURRENT 1-B:
Breaking with Tradition: Enhancing Legal Department Value Through Creative Billing Arrangements and Alternative Dispute Resolution

As Chief Legal Officers retool their litigation strategies and reevaluate their legal spend, they encounter a variety of “alternative” approaches to traditional legal department management. For partnerships with outside counsel, there are alternative fee arrangements that promise billing more closely correlated with performance. For litigation matters, there are alternative dispute resolution processes that shrink (or outright eliminate) the trial process to cut the costs and efforts needed to achieve resolution. But to what extent are these alternatives viable options for your legal department? And how succinctly do they fit into your organization’s legal strategy? Separate fact from fiction, productive from trendy as you return to your organization ready to derive benefit from legal alternatives:

  • Sift through theoretical discussion and apply a more practical analysis of how alternative processes affect the achievement of legal goals.
  • Derive an effective method of tying outside counsel spending to performance benchmarks.
  • Utilize a connection between performance and pay to identify—and motivate—firms capable of efficiently meeting the corporation’s goals.
  • Weighing alternative dispute resolution costs against full litigation costs. Is there an incentive to staying out of the courtroom?
4:30-5:15

Josephine Belli
Associate General Counsel
Combe

Andrea Ciota
Assistant General Counsel
Computer Sciences Corporation

Parlaying Your Legal Prowess into Business Leadership Amidst Heightened Cost Scrutiny

It seems counterintuitive—realizing an opportunity to take on a greater role and implement more strategic tasks in an environment of stricter budgetary control. But it is not unrealistic and will, in fact, become pivotal as the corporation relies on your legal department’s shrewd guidance in pursuit of continued growth. As corporations mull expansion decisions, hiring initiatives and governance changes in the face of limited financial freedom, the door is wide open for you to contribute insight and proficiency in defensive management, risk assessment and astute due diligence while acquiring greater organizational influence. Return to your organization with the tools needed to maximize this opportunity while positioning your corporation for optimal success:

  • Identify target areas for contribution and determine how to best align legal skills with corporate need.
  • Minimize compliance overhead and delay by developing a more transparent partnership between legal and the greater corporation.
  • Utilize success in handling organizational matters to acquire greater leadership influence within the corporation.
6:15-7:15

Luiz Sette
Associate General Counsel and Lead, Worldwide Commercial Legal Team
Microsoft Corporation

Forging a Business Partnership With Outside Counsel Through Strategic Alignment, Performance Benchmarking and Relationship Transparency

Reliance on outside counsel is an inescapable reality for many of America’s largest corporations, but that is not to say the chief legal officer need forfeit his control to outsiders. As general counsel work to root their legal endeavors in a value-driven context, the objective is naturally to connect each dollar of legal spending to a stated goal of the corporation. In the spirit of preserving that connection comes a need to establish outside counsel as business partners rather than vendors. From working to erase unnecessary litigation to implementing efficient fee arrangements to prioritizing compliance and IP issues most relevant to the organization’s underlying goals, you can only generate an optimal outside counsel contribution when you direct them to share in the strategic and philosophical goals of the in-house legal department. Arm yourself with a strategy for transforming the counsel relationship and experiencing the benefit:

  • Forge business partnerships with outside counsel only when they demonstrate an appreciation for—and an ability to support—the overarching goals of the corporation.
  • Devise a means of corresponding the corporation’s goals to the self-interest of outside law firms.
  • Incentivize the law firm’s partnership participation to assure a successful outside counsel strategy.
  • Create a transparent network between external and internal legal professionals that minimizes cost and downtime.