The general counsel who frames their value purely in terms of legal advice is leaving influence on the table. “We are not legal advisors alone,” says Terrie Devonish, chief legal officer and managing director, Canada at Altus Group. “We’re business advisors, and we’re business partners.”
That conviction has guided Devonish through more than five years at Altus, a Toronto-headquartered intelligence, software, and analytics company serving the global commercial real estate industry, and through one of its most consequential transitions: exiting the services business, completing complex cross-border divestitures, and repositioning as a pure-play data, technology, and analytics platform.
Reshaping the legal mandate
Since 2022, Altus has simplified its portfolio by exiting services to concentrate on data, technology, and analytics, and the legal team’s mandate shifted with it. Client agreements, data and AI governance, securities work, and M&A opportunities now define the day-to-day. Post-simplification, Devonish says, “our legal team can get very focused on helping with client agreements and with advising on governance structures for data and for AI,” while the company continues to look at acquisitions that could expand its core platforms.
The Ryan deal: three jurisdictions, one transaction
The sale of Altus’s Property Tax business to Ryan – a deal valued at C$700 million – was central to the portfolio simplification, and it placed Devonish’s team under sustained pressure. The transaction spanned Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, requiring navigation of distinct labour, tax, and competition regimes, as well as separate change management and communication approaches for each market. “When you’re doing a cross-border transaction, you’re dealing with not only various laws and regulations, but also cultures,” Devonish says. “American colleagues and clients may react differently to Canadian colleagues and clients, [who] may react differently to UK.” The deal also involved both asset and share sale structures.
External advisors supplied specialist expertise in IP and securities law, while internal lawyers translated that guidance into company-specific risk assessments. Post-close, the legal team’s focus narrowed to client agreements, AI and data governance, and building an acquisitions pipeline aligned to Altus’s remaining data, software, and analytics businesses.
AI governance: product, board, and internal adoption
Altus’s clients are closely attentive to how their data is being used to train AI models, and that scrutiny drives a cross-functional AI governance structure spanning product, R&D, legal, and sales teams. “This is something where you wake up every day, and there’s something new out there,” Devonish says of the multi-jurisdictional regulatory environment the legal team monitors across Canada, the United States, the EU, and the UK.
On the product side, Altus launched ARGUS Assist – an AI agent built on the ARGUS Intelligence platform – at its annual client forum in April 2026. The feature introduces a conversational lawyer, compressing tasks that previously took hours into minutes. Internally, the legal team uses Claude and Copilot for day-to-day efficiency and is exploring tools for contract summarization, negotiation preparation, and litigation e-discovery management for in-house teams. “I would say legal is at the forefront of that,” Devonish says. “We’re one of the teams that have taken the lead in integrating and using AI in our work.”
Staying current across jurisdictions requires three things, she says: internal lawyers with data and AI expertise; cross-functional partners who surface market intelligence from clients and competitors; and a network of external counsel in key markets asked to advise proactively.
Data governance and a potential dual listing
Altus holds a significant volume of client data, and its data governance program is a board-level priority. The regulatory landscape is shifting – particularly in the United States, where several states have begun adopting GDPR-style frameworks – alongside ongoing developments in EU, UK, and Canadian law. “Legal is very involved in ensuring that [the] data governance program is strong and robust,” Devonish says. A potential dual listing in Canada and the US, announced by Altus’s CEO at the company’s investor day in December 2025, would add another layer, implicating at minimum two securities regulators, cross-border disclosure obligations, and investor relations strategy.
Both sides of the boardroom table
Since April 2024, Devonish has served as a director on the board of Cboe Canada, and she describes the experience as a direct counterpoint to her management role at Altus. “On the other side of the table, being a board member, it’s pure oversight,” she says. The “nose in, fingers out” constraint of a director is, as she notes, the opposite of what management demands – and learning to switch between those modes has sharpened how she advises Altus’s own board in return. For general counsel considering board service, she recommends the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) program and the Board Diversity Network as starting points that offer both structured education and professional networks.
Beyond legal: holding two mandates
In May 2026, Devonish added managing director, Canada, to her CLO mandate, taking on client-facing and market-growth work alongside the legal function. The balance is not simple – “these balances are never easy,” she says – but a strong internal leadership team has allowed her to shift attention toward the commercial work. She is unsentimental about what the expanded role reflects: many peers at her level have taken on investor relations, communications, or chief administrative officer responsibilities, and she sees it as evidence that lawyers are trusted to hold far more than a legal brief.
The broader lesson from Altus Group's years of transformation and change, she says, is that adaptability is not just a personal skill but a leadership obligation. “I spend a lot of time, probably more time than I ever have, talking to my teams about why the change is happening and how we can manage it, how to avoid ‘grieving,’ staying static and to get in front of change,” she says. “It is scary, but it makes our jobs more exciting.”
For lawyers who want to move closer to the business, her advice is concrete: get to know your internal clients personally, understand what drives management’s focus, and cultivate mentorship inside and outside the legal function. “Develop your role as a trusted source,” she says. “[It] doesn’t even have to be a trusted legal advisor, just a trusted source. The legal advice piece will come.”
Terrie Devonish is a member of the Canadian Lawyer Leaders Network.