Five Questions with In-House Counsel: Tiffany Jung

Tiffany Jung is General Counsel for Buyatab Online Inc. Buyatab, a leader in digital gifting, has been named as one of Canada's fastest growing companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ awards. Tiffany uses her combination of firm and in-house experience to provide practical advice on legal and strategic matters in the tech space.

In her spare time, she enjoys playing ultimate frisbee and squash. She is also a co-founder of "The Basic Stitches".

1. Why did you decide to become an In-House Counsel?

   "I decided to become an in-house counsel, because I wanted to become more involved in a company's strategic decision-making. I also liked the idea of having a single client – even though there may be different departments demanding my time, we're still all working together toward the same goal. "

2. Is the role of In-House Counsel changing? And if yes, how so?

   "I'm not sure if it's just the role of in-house counsel that's changing or companies' approaches to business more generally, but there is less focus on the paper and more emphasis on the relationship, both internally and externally. In-house counsel need to effectively communicate and collaborate with the business to understand the objectives and explain legal concerns, so that they can be more than just monkeys turning redlines in external negotiations. "

3. What is one of your favourite moments in your legal career?

   "I gave a presentation that leaned heavily on memes to a Product Management team to explain when they should reach out to in-house counsel for input on new products and product changes. Immediately after the presentation, I received an email from one Product Manager saying that it was the first time he actually understood a lawyer and why we were so worried all of the time! Definitely one of my favourite moments."

4. How are you leveraging legal technology?

   "Primarily I use the technologies that my business teams use and build legal tools in those technologies. For example, at more than one workplace, we've instituted a "legal request tool" in the CRM platform used by the Sales team to centralize their requests, as well as give them visibility into current legal request volumes.
   
   I could certainly be better at leveraging legal technology (or maybe legal technology could better catch up to my needs?), but it's also difficult to establish metrics for legal teams that don't revolve around number of contracts or projects. Often, it's the 2-minute phone call that adds the most value and mitigates the most risk!"

5. If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing about the legal industry, what would it be?

   "One universal NDA template. Confidential information is a company's lifeblood, and so NDAs can't be taken lightly, but there's no need for precedent templates to differ so much! It would save so much legal resource time and business relationship capital at the outset if there was one universal NDA template."

 

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