About the series
As one of Toronto's top business law firms, Gowling WLG is comprised of a diverse and highly experienced team that provides clients with insightful advice, valuable counsel and trusted representation across a variety of key industries, including energy, financial services, infrastructure, mining, manufacturing, technology and life sciences.
In this series, you will meet a number of practitioners in our Toronto office who have helped their clients overcome a variety of complex legal obstacles. In addition, you will also have the chance to hear more about how these professionals began their careers, the challenges and opportunities they have experienced along the way, and what insight they can bring during these unprecedented times.
Meet Dan Cole
Dan Cole, national leader of Gowling WLG's Advertising & Regulatory Group, talks about some of the recent innovative tools the practice group has implemented to provide more cost-effective solutions for its clients.
Transcript
James: Hello everyone today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dan Cole. Dan is a partner at Gowling WLG and is our national practice group leader for Canadian advertising and regulatory law. Welcome Dan.
Dan I'd like to start with your background I'm told that after high school you earned a bachelor of science in molecular biology and genetics my question to you is how did that lead you into a career in the law?
Dan: Well thanks very much James it's great to be here with you today and it's actually a bit of a funny story I was all set and ready to go the route of a masters and a PHD after my undergrad but something didn't feel quite right to me at that time and so I actually ended up taking a year off after undergrad to think things over and law had always been something that I was thinking about but it wasn't until I took that year off and did my research that I actually discovered intellectual property law realizing very quickly that many before me had combined signs of the law and I have to tell you at that time I was pretty sold on the idea.
James: So let's talk about clients for a moment many if not most of our clients have had to adopt to a robust digital and e-commerce platform as a result of the pandemic how have you and members of your group helped our clients adapt.
Dan: Yeah I think you're absolutely right by necessity I think many of our clients have had to adopt and adapt to survive type of mentality this past year and we saw bricks and mortar businesses be forced online and online businesses be forced to enhance their service offerings to compete in what was now becoming a much more crowded space I think we also saw a number of key regulatory changes that were aimed at helping facilitate e-commerce so allowing some businesses to enter the e-commerce space for the first time our team had the good fortune of helping many of these clients either enter or adapt within this online space so from compliance with complex consumer protection laws to all the privacy considerations and everything in between we were able to assist many of our clients as they tried to navigate this new reality.
James: What innovations have you and the practice group adopted to help serve clients?
Dan: That's a great question you know our team has been focused for a long time on trying to do things more efficiently so from initially creating online presses and data bank systems to being among the first to use alternative fee arrangement we've always tried to produce better faster and more cost-effective solutions for our clients recently however this all came to a head with our practical promotions tool this is a really unique and cool service offering that offers an intelligent artificial intelligence-based software solution that allows our clients to produce legally compliant contest rules so in short our clients enter information and this tool spits out the results of a set of compliant rules interestingly and just recently we were actually engaged to develop even more ai-based software solutions so I think it's very fair to say that this way of practicing law isn't going anywhere.
James: What do you see as the major trends or regulatory risks that are that exist now or that are coming in the advertising world?
Dan: To me the biggest and most important consideration here i think will be a heightened sense of consumer protection but as this world moves online now I think what we're seeing is more and more vulnerable populations participate in e-commerce which i suspect is going to lead the regulators to focus enforcement in this area so from e-commerce law to deceptive marketing practices I really feel they're going to see a significant focus on protecting consumers.
James: It's been exactly one year since the who declared the pandemic what have been the most common questions that have been asked of you and your group during this time.
Dan: I think in addition to the day-to-day certainly related to COVID-19 um we've seen a lot of questions about compliance with COVID-19 protocols and advertisements promotions and campaigns so making sure everyone's wearing masks making sure everyone is properly socially distanced but we've also had to ensure that pandemic sensitivities are being considered in the advertisements themselves so I think for me the marketing world has done a really good job of continuing on during the pandemic but to suffice it to say they're just newer and more nuanced considerations that now need to be properly factored in to help ensure compliance I think the most important and you know common discussions I've been having are those on a human level um people checking in on people and genuinely that has been truly amazing and it's something I really hope continues after the pandemic ends.
James: Dan thank you very much it's always a pleasure.
Dan: Thanks so much for having me James.
Read the original article on GowlingWLG.com
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
