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NATL61_058,059 03/08/2007 10:03 AM Page 58 Profile Marching to a different drummer s vice-president, law and govern- Ament affairs at Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co., Georgia Sievwright comes face-to-face with a range of issues that draw on all her legal and business skills. Competition law; employee labour relations; environ- mental, compliance, pension or gover- nance issues; media relations; litigation management… all in a day’s work. “As an in-house counsel,you have to be a bit of a generalist,”says the 18-year com- pany veteran,who spent just six months in private practice after being called to the bar in 1985, a time she remembers as “frustrating.” From her point of view,“in private practice you’re a pawn in someone else’s chess game, insofar as you’re usually dealing with a very narrow business prob- lem and few facts. But as an in-house counsel, I’m playing an important role in the whole chess game;the ramifications of my contribution are felt throughout the entire organization.” There’s always a new deal,a divestiture, or an acquisition, enthuses Sievwright, whose career took off during three years as an in-house counsel at IBM Canada. In 1988, she was recruited by Hewlett- Packard (HP) as its first-ever Canadian PAUL EEKHOFF general counsel. Although Sievwright 58 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association MARCH 2007