Avoiding client suits
Adrian Lang BMO Financial Group
Adrian Lang says there is nothing worse for a company than to end up in litigation with a business partner or client.
“You don’t want to be in litigation with your customer. That’s not a happy place for anybody,” said Lang, associate general counsel at Bank of Montreal and winner of this year’s Canadian General Counsel Award in litigation management.
“In a business like ours, the customer is the central focus.”
Lang’s solution to the litigation-with-client conundrum is to focus her efforts on dispute resolution. “We spend as much time on that as we do managing our current litigation.”
Lang, who joined the bank two years ago from private practice, manages a team that includes three lawyers and paralegal and administrative staff.
They are responsible for overseeing all litigation within the personal and commercial banking group, including credit cards.
Bank of Montreal is part of BMO Financial Group, a diversified financial services firm, providing wealth management, and retail and investment banking services. It has more than $672 billion in assets and a staff exceeding 46,000.
Since joining the bank less than two years ago, Lang has been involved in a number of class actions, including a Supreme Court of Canada case known as Marcotte, which dealt with provincial consumer protection legislation and its applicability to banks, and litigation involving the credit card fees charged to merchants.
She was also involved in settling a number of class actions and a favourable settlement of a mortgage fraud case.
It’s in the dispute resolution and managing legal fees area that she has made big strides. She was able to reduce the bank’s overall caseload by 20 per cent and has implemented measures to increase the use of alternative fee arrangements to manage litigation costs.
“The biggest challenge is in managing our costs. Being strategic and working with external counsel is important.” That’s a common theme among nominees in the litigation category.
Now, Lang doesn’t open a litigation file unless there is an alternative fee arrangement in place.
She said it allows you to build more trust and a better partnership with law firms, and the bank gets better service. The company also has certainty to costs at the outset.
She said capped and fixed fees are the most popular.
Lang has also introduced a voluntary dispute resolution program covering all litigation.
“It’s much faster than the court system, which can be a very frustrating system to be in, and therefore much cheaper all around.
“We’re trying to make an unhappy situation less painful and get to resolution more quickly.”