Tomorrow would be a nervous day for our department, especially for my boss and I. The Board meetings of both companies would be on and the directors from Hong Kong would be attending via video link. One of the Hong Kong directors is one of my boss’s boss, which makes him my “grand boss” of sorts, I guess. He’s Aussie too, but has been in HK as a regional head legal honcho for a long time. A bit of the Grand Corleone (GC in every sense of the word – a GC who is beyond General Counsel. In fact GC in so many way…) of the legal departments of the Asia Pacific/Australia/NZ region of the company.

For some 3-4 weeks running up to this meeting, we have been scurrying around making sure all relevant departments submit the papers in time for us to collate and distribute to all board members and attendees. Strictly we are the Legal department but like so many legal departments of so many organisations, we take care of the company secretarial stuff as well. A business case has been submitted to our regional office, to employ a specialist company secretary but until that person is on board, we run with this as best we can. Thus far, there has been a couple of major stumbles on my part.

Even while in Malaysia, when I doubled up as both the Legal Counsel and Company Secretary of my employer, I did not particularly enjoy the company secretary bit of my job. There were just too many procedures and papers borne out of traditions and archaic structures which can for the most part, serve no tangible purpose except create a body of evidence as to a corporate entity’s thought and decision making processes. It’s a strange one to figure out as to why a lawyer would find such a task any different or less satisfying or more frustrating than pure legal work. I guess there’s good reason for many organisations to combine the 2 but for us practitioners, there’s a really thick line separating the 2 and you either like the other side or you don’t…