Innovation Starts with Legal: How In House Lawyers can serve a Company beyond a Traditional Legal Role

February 2013

Abstract

Have you ever had a project that involved business issues, challenged the status quo and pushed your legal skills to the limit? You are not alone. In fact, there are at least five lawyers at CA Technologies from around the world that have something to say about just this situation. You will hear the role of In House Counsel stretched and compared with terms such as lawyer, advisor, business leader, arbitor, confidante, collaborator and innovator. You will hear about methods such as collaboration, advocacy, communication, organization and listening. Moreover, you’ll see how values such as teamwork, innovation, trust, respect and loyalty played a large part in getting the challenge resolved. These are some of the themes that a team of lawyers share. This paper describes a journey consisting of at least 200 man hours each person, multiple conference calls, video conferences and intense drafting sessions resulting overall in an innovative solution that is more valuable as a whole and much more than the sum of each part. A group of lawyers at CA Technologies were placed in a unique position to recommend and drive changes in the company with respect to its contract between itself and its customers across the globe. CA Technologies reinvented its model agreements for its customers worldwide based on multi-faceted research, analysis and review of negotiations with customers across the globe. Using a task force made up of lawyers around the world with very different challenges and legal systems, the team challenged itself and other groups in the company to find innovative ways to improve its model agreements, with the aim to create agreements that were even handed, fair and addressed many customer concerns. The innovative solution finally developed was rolled out across the company in 2011 and continues to gather pace as the best customer agreement in CA Technologies’ three and a half decade history.

Authors

Richard Anthony

VP Managing Assistant General Counsel, CA Technologies, Australia

Richard Anthony is Vice president and managing Assistant General Counsel for CA (Pacific) Pty Limited. Richard manages the Legal department for CA, Inc. in Australia and New Zealand, including the Federal government contracting and Channel Sales. He is also very active representing the Asia Pacific region in a number of global CA projects. In his 19 years since admittance as Solicitor and Barrister in the State of South Australia, Richard has advised government, EDS and PeopleSoft, holding a variety of technology roles including the functions of contract management, internal audit and In- House counsel before he commenced with CA in 2005. Prior to qualifying as a lawyer Richard was awarded an Honours degree in Arts focusing on English Literature. Richard is a member of Law Society of New South Wales and Australian Corporate Lawyers Association. He currently lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Cathleen and three young children.

Charles Blackburn

VP Managing Assistant GC, CA Technologies, USA

Nishat Ruiter is Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at CA, Inc. with 13 years of experience in combined areas of Intellectual property, Government Contracting, Regulatory Compliance and Contract Drafting. Nishat currently oversees all North American Government Contracts , manages its legal team and also serves as lead negotiator for the global outsourcing accounts at CA, comprising several hundred million dollars of overall revenue. Nishat was recently recognized by the CEO and Chief Compliance officer as a management leader that leads in compliance effectiveness, and by the General Counsel for excellence in teamwork. Nishat lives in NJ, enjoys family outings with her Dutch husband, two children Bella (7) and Alec (4) and loves to bike, travel and enjoy an espresso.

Nishat Ruiter

General Counsel, TED Conferences, USA

Nishat Ruiter is General Counsel of TED conferences, a non profit organization that believes passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. Through creativity, and a deep respect for TED's mission, Nishat's work is centered on ensuring that TED's legal requirements are met through a combination of practical and creative solutions that meets its needs, while still retaining the authentic TED voice across every area where possible. She manages the legal issues with respect to TED's licensing, partnerships, TM, brand protection, TED's code of conduct, data privacy, copyright, transactions and all corporate legal matters. Prior to TED, she worked as Associate General Counsel where she spent ten years in a variety of roles including managing legal issues on all marketing and advertising, M&A integration, and led the North American legal team responsible for the legal review of $1B/year in licensing transactions at CA Technologies. She also worked as Managing Counsel at LivePerson, provided in house counsel legal support to Chubb Insurance, Binary Tree.com and Capco. She is a visiting guest lecturer at Fordham Law School (New York) since 2013, faculty for the Practicing Law Institute, and has served on the Editorial Board of the International In-house Counsel Journal (London). Inspired by a Bahá’í perspective on things, she loves resolving the most complex problems with an elegant solution, but always with coffee on hand. She enjoys music, tennis, hosting Spiritual Cafes in her community to foster meaningful conversations, and finding connectedness with people from all walks of life. She is married and mother of two teenagers. You can follow her on twitter @nishatruiter.

Companies

CA Technologies

CA Technologies is an enterprise software company.

CA Technologies

CA, Inc. is a large computer software company. More information can be found at CA.com

CA Technologies

CA, Inc. is a large computer software company. More information can be found at CA.com

CA Technologies

CA, Inc. is a large computer software company. More information can be found at CA.com

TED Conferences

TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.

Innovation Starts with Legal: How In House Lawyers can serve a Company beyond a Traditional Legal Role

Abstract

Authors

Companies

CA Technologies

CA Technologies

CA Technologies

CA Technologies

TED Conferences

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