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CCCA62_052-055.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_Profile-FIN.qxd 09/14/2007 04:28 PM Page 52 Profiles Mike Hardin: Mike Hardin: celebrating the solo celebrating the solo in-house counsel in-house counsel he acronym “OLO” (Only Legal Officer) has become so well-accepted and so often- Tused in corporate counsel circles that it’s hard to remember that it was coined a mere two years ago. That’s when Mike Hardin, sole in-house general counsel and corporate secretary at then- Ashton Mining of Canada Inc. of Vancouver (it combined with Stornoway Diamond Corporation in 2007), had an epiphany. Surveying all the literature that swirled around the“chief legal officer”(CLO) designation at the 2003 CCCA conference in Montreal, he thought to himself:“What about all the lawyers like me who work as a one-lawyer law department? We deserve to be recognized for the unique role we play in supporting small and medium-cap companies whose legal needs can be as challenging and complex as those of larger organizations.” So in 2005, when it became Hardin’s turn to sit on the organizing committee for CCCA’s Vancouver conference, he came up with the idea of a panel titled “Best Practices for OLOs and Small Law Departments.” Since then, Hardin’s brainchild has taken root.“It struck a chord.There are quite a number of OLOs among our membership,” he says.The acronym has also brought a new level of appreci- ation for what Hardin calls “the day-to-day challenges of being a sole in-house lawyer in a multi-faceted business environment.” “We are pretty much expected to do it all. No sane lawyer in a major firm would attempt to practice in five to six major areas of the law — but that’s pretty much what many OLOs do every day.” A focused practice ROBERT KARPA Ironically, on the day he’s interviewed for this article, Hardin, 60, is four days out from retiring 52 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association FALL 2007