Few lawsuits faced by Canadian law departments

From the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association survey of its members for the 2007 In-House Corporate Counsel Barometer, at 17, comes a surprising finding. Over the past year, 16% of the 722 responding corporate counsel reported that their company did not have a single “legal dispute” filed against it. Since this data comes from the section of the report entitled “litigation,” I assume that a “legal dispute” is a law suit. About one third of the respondents work for organizations that faced only one-to-five “legal disputes.”

This data hardly portrays a litigation explosion in Canada. To the contrary, lawsuits are a distinctly infrequent occurrence. Of course, these companies might file lawsuits against other parties, but if Canadian companies are like US companies in this respect, that is the exception.