Page 21 - CCCA 250375 Magazine_Summer 2016

{ Feature }

WHen nICHolas CermInaro took a seCondment
at BomBardIer InC. In 2008 From HIs JoB as a
Secondments
Secondments Cthe opportunity to join Bom- rose FulBrIgHt, lIttle dId He knoW tHat It in their career who are beneftting.
Secondments
CommerCIal lItIgatIon assoCIate at norton
erminaro had been an associ-
And it’s not just lawyers early
ate for about 18 months when
Take Swapna Chandra, Senior Le-
Was goIng to Be a Career-CHangIng move—as
bardier arose to fll a maternity
leave around the same time the f- Is oFten tHe Case For seCondments. gal Counsel in the Enforcement
Branch at the Ontario Securities
nancial crisis hit, and he jumped at Commission (OSC).
it. He calls it “a career defning moment for me.” He got exposed Chandra, a 10-year lawyer, was seconded from the Enforce-
to securities and M&A, an area of law that he did not have a lot of ment Branch to the Corporate Finance Branch in a non-litigation
involvement in as a litigator, and he discovered it was something role for eight months. “It was a chance for me to get a little un-
he really enjoyed. “My personality and the way I like to work were comfortable,” says Chandra, who until then had spent most of
better suited to the type of practice we do in corporate law, rather her career litigating.
than litigation.” “I got to do real corporate securities law,” she says, which in-
When he returned to his law frm, he joined the securities cluded everything from reviewing prospectuses to dealing with
law group. Fast forward to 2015, and today Cerminaro is Direc- issues around continuous disclosure. “It was really quite differ-
tor of Legal Services at Bombardier, a job he took in May of last ent work than I had been used to doing as Litigation Counsel
year after eight years of working at his former law frm, where in the Enforcement Branch. I learned a tremendous amount.”
Bombardier was one of his clients. That secondment, he notes, Following the secondment, Chandra returned to the En-
“had a pretty big impact on my career.” forcement Branch in a more senior role, where she now focuses
Cerminaro is not alone in beneftting from a secondment. on litigating issues arising from corporate fnance.
More and more corporate law departments are using second- It’s not clear how many legal departments avail themselves of
ments as a recruiting and staff development tool, and a way to secondments, but lawyers say the number is growing. General
develop deeper relations with law frms and other departments Counsel who decline to use secondments as a tool to improve
within their organization. their department are missing opportunities.

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