Sara Chan

Title: Head of Rights Management & Legal Operations, Associate General Counsel

Company: Corus Entertainment

How did you get into legal operations? 

I am a lawyer and have been at Corus for 9 years. 2 years ago, our general counsel asked me if I would help him develop a legal ops function in the law department. It was something he always thought was needed and now he had an opportunity to make that happen. We were pretty traditional; a lot of paper and a lot of people engaging in processes that may not make sense. There was no incentive or enablement to change those things. He saw an opportunity for us to make things more efficient and make things better for those who work in our department. It became part of my role where I was doing it off the side of my desk while still handling my duties as a lawyer. It was very challenging to get it off the ground and it became a diagnostic year or a foundational year trying to figure out how to add the most value.

It’s interesting that many people transition from a lawyer into a legal ops role.

I know there is more of a legal ops talent pipeline in the US than in Canada where it’s still in its infancy. You’ve got very large in-house departments like banks or insurance companies where you’ve got people who have been under the traditional banner of innovation or knowledge management which is a natural fit for those people who all tend to be lawyers to begin with. I went through the exercise of having to post for a legal operations manager when I was able to build out my team. There aren’t many in Canada who actually do this yet. It’s not a title that people are familiar with, people don’t even know what it is. You don’t have many people to draw on who have done this before, you have to bring together a bunch of different skills sets and functions in order to figure out which one you care about the most. Is it somebody who can do technology? Is it someone who’s good at process improvement? Is it somebody who can manage budgets or do e-billing? Those aren’t all typically skills you find in one person. I think it is quite common for a lawyer take over the legal ops function as a starting point; one who is familiar with the department and how it runs and already has well-established relationships with people, which is important.

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

I think I joined in my first year (2018). When my GC asked me if I would do this (take on legal ops role), I had to go Google legal operations and CLOC naturally came up. He had already heard of it and I thought the best way to learn more about this was to go to the CLOC Institute. That’s where I joined where I had a year-long membership and also an admission to the Institute.

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

I think my biggest challenge is getting people on the legal team to think differently. What I didn’t know about this job before I took it is that 90% of it is change management. I am still working on it and as we know, people are often resistant to change. Particularly, in my experience I find lawyers and people in the legal profession to be even more so. We have been making headway, but it’s a slow process, project by project, person by person changing the way people think about their work and getting them open to doing things differently, even if they just try it for a week.

I have a team of three right now. A legal operations manager working full time in legal ops. I work 50% legal ops at this time. We also have a legal ops specialist.

The law profession has been around for so long and we’ve seen such a slow development over time. Now that this new idea of legal ops is being introduced, I’m sure it could cause some friction.

People don’t know exactly what we’re here to do. We start with asking, what are your pain points and how can we help you alleviate those? It doesn’t always have to be technology related. It could be process improvement or it could be setting up communication lines with businesses and building relationships. People don’t understand the value until they actually begin to work with us. Convincing people that our goal is to remove the administrative and manual burden so that they can make better use of their time is a real challenge.

How has CLOC helped you in your professional role?

It’s sort of like a group therapy when you realize that everyone is in the same boat as you. It’s easy to feel isolated and lost when you’re tackling something like looking at a new vendor for a particular type of technology. Even doing something like implementing a records retention policy and you want to understand how other people have done it or organizations similar to you might have done it. I think that community has been the most useful thing to me. People have been generous with their time including phone calls with people in Australia to help talk about vendors. The community is what I find most useful about CLOC.

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 would say just start somewhere. Try and find one project that you think is going to help the most people. Find a champion that will help you do that and go from there. When you look at those 12 core competencies, it can feel incredibly overwhelming. Most of us are resourced-strapped and don’t have a tech budget or a team of people to help do these things. Pick a low hanging fruit with something that has a good chance of success and that’s how you start build credibility and momentum. Once people understand what you can do for them, that will open the door for more opportunities and resources. Going to the CLOC Institute is also inspiring because you can see what everyone is doing including failures and successes. Be okay with the potential for failure and accept that failure is natural in a “test and learn” environment, which is what we are trying to build.