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

Sharyn Dodson, VP & Associate General Counsel, CA Technologies, United Kingdom

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.

Sharyn Dodson is Vice President, Managing Assistant General Counsel for CA Technologies UK & Ireland and EMEA Privacy Officer. Sharyn is a Solicitor admitted to the roll in 2002 and manages the Legal Department for CA Technologies in the UK & Ireland covering all areas of law but with particular expertise in Information Technology (IT) law and practice. She is also Privacy Officer for the company in EMEA. Sharyn originally joined CA in 1997 as a legal advisor, having successfully completed law school. In 2000 Sharyn left CA to go into private practice specializing in IT law during which time she finalized her training and was admitted as a Solicitor. She spent time working for clients such as Microsoft and Dell. Sharyn re-joined CA in 2002 and took her role as manager of the UK legal team in 2006. Sharyn is a member of various professional associations and forums including The Law Society, the American Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and the Technology In House Forum. Sharyn lives in Surrey, England with her husband and they enjoy travelling, reading and skiing (both snow and water) and Sharyn is a keen runner.

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