Morris Popowich

Title: Legal Counsel, Commercial Services and Legal Operations

Company: TMX Group

How did you get into legal operations? 

I was a securities lawyer by training and then I went in-house and was at a couple of different places followed by my current employer, TMX. A big project came up that really fits inside the scope of legal operations. I talked it over with the person I was reporting to, and I said ‘there’s this new thing called legal operations, why don’t we look at potentially creating a role that encompasses more than just the one project I’m managing’ and it all came together. We created a new role where I’m working not full time, but a good portion of my time on legal operations.

When did you join CLOC? What was your main reason for joining?

It would have been the start of 2019. I had met with somebody who was familiar with CLOC and suggested I look into it. I found Mimi, who is the head of the CLOC Toronto Regional Group and she walked me through what it was about. It seemed like something I wanted to be part of, particularly to learn from Mimi and other great people who have been doing legal operations longer than I have and it’s been a great year so far.

What has been your biggest legal ops challenge and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge, being new to legal ops journey, is deciding what to start with and what to devote resources to as we don’t have the scale to attack everything at once. CLOC has been really helpful in defining what are the problems we should look at first, where can we provide the quickest wins, where will our investments go the farthest. I think we’re at that point now where we’re over that hurdle in terms of understanding what are the problems we want to tackle and the next couple of years will be about solving some of those challenges.

Is there anything CLOC could be doing to further assist you in your challenges?

I think in terms of overall legal operations, what I’m really interested in is CLOC being a vehicle to move some more traditional or archaic practices in the corporate legal profession along more quickly. There is a challenge of coordination and we all know there are some things that happen in corporate legal practice that are a little old fashioned, but the question is; how do we all move together to this new and improved approach? I’m really interested in using CLOC as a vehicle for getting together, coordinating, and deciding on a new way of doing something and then moving it forward. I haven’t quite seen a venue as interested or capable of those sorts of things and delivering change as CLOC.

How has CLOC helped you in your professional role?

We are, relative to CLOC membership, a mid-size enterprise. We do have a lot of resources, but we don’t have the same resources that some of the really large enterprises have at their disposal. We are always interested in what are the best practices out there, frankly, big or small, but particularly what are our peers doing and what are much larger enterprises doing. We want to be aware of that and keep up with trends. That is something that’s been a huge benefit not only for my employer, TMX, having access to that information, but myself personally being able to contribute things I’ve learned to TMX.

What is the one thing you would say to inspire your fellow CLOC Members to become more involved in the development of the legal operations role and profession?

I’d say that the one thing about working in law is that you are always in opposition to other people at other organizations and law firms. There is an element where you either can’t cooperate due to confidentiality reasons or because you’re on the other side of a particular matter, or just because you don’t have the right relationship to coordinate. This is really a forum where we can get together and all work to solve issues which is unique in the law field. For people who like to work together, CLOC is the best forum to do that.

Do you feel CLOC offers you enough networking opportunities to pursue your needs?

Absolutely. In the Toronto group in particular, we have been very conscious to mix up formal and business type meetings where we learn best business practices from each other, with more social events. That in combination with the Vegas Institute I attended in the Spring, I’m really happy with the opportunity to network and work on harder legal challenges.