Risk is core to how legal advice is delivered at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. The advice given to leadership equips them with a comprehensive understanding of key information, enabling a thorough assessment of potential risks, Shannon Fuhrer says.
Fuhrer has been general counsel at NAIT for only seven months, yet she has already encouraged the institution to imagine how its lawyers can best support the organization faced with budget constraints, international policy changes and hard choices about the future.
She moved in-house in November 2023 after years in private practice and was elevated to the top job in mid-2025. Fuhrer joined NAIT as legal counsel after seven years at Edmonton firm Emery Jamieson LLP. In mid-2025, she was told the sitting general counsel was about to leave. She saw the opportunity, took a chance, and won the general counsel position. She says that for the legal counsel position she originally took, “NAIT chose me,” and for the general counsel role, “I chose NAIT.”
Her love of translating complicated ideas into understandable advice began before she became a lawyer. After an English degree and a brief exploration into attaining an education degree, she worked at a forensic engineering firm, editing technical reports so that “the layperson, who’s not an engineer,” could understand them. A Shakespeare professor pushed her toward law, something Fuhrer dryly notes her mom had suggested years earlier. After law school, she joined Emery Jamieson, determined to build a solicitor practice focused on collaborative deals.
What private practice could not offer was a deep understanding of the client. In the work she handled, Fuhrer would often wonder about the client's past decisions before reaching out for legal advice. She had the work to complete, but not the full picture of why it was needed or where it fit within the client’s overall strategy. By early 2023, she knew she wanted to see the full picture and began considering how to achieve that in an in-house role.
Inside NAIT, the picture is not simple. Almost every agreement the institution signs is reviewed by her team, yet contracts are only one slice of a portfolio which also includes applied research, intellectual property, student conduct and accommodations, board governance, political risk, and human rights questions. Privacy is also a significant focus, as Alberta replaced the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act with two new statutes that impact all public bodies, including post-secondary institutions like NAIT. “Ensuring NAIT continues to meet and adapt to the requirements of the new legislation has been extensive but forged fresh collaborative relationships between legal and other NAIT teams,” she says. Recognizing that NAIT faces challenges similar to those of its post-secondary peers, Fuhrer aims to build collaborative relationships with other institutions to share legal knowledge and resources.
Those realities drive her stance on risk. She says it’s important to find a balance between caution and leaving room for innovation and planning for the future. She uses a simple analogy in conversations with management: “If you have no [spice] in your food, it’s very bland. If you have too much pepper, you can’t eat it. But accept a little bit of risk… to continue moving forward.” Her aim is not to minimize risk at all costs, but to ensure leaders understand if there is risk, why it exists and how it may impact a project.
Fuhrer is also determined to enhance how colleagues experience the legal team. She invests a lot of energy in building relationships with her colleagues. Fuhrer recognizes that many people may feel nervous speaking to lawyers. She approaches her work with curiosity and works to empower her colleagues with a better understanding of legal risks and obligations.
“Under my leadership, general counsel services at NAIT aims to be active and engaged partners,” she says. When searching for NAIT’s next legal counsel, she involved their long-serving paralegal and representatives of NAIT’s business units in selecting the successful candidate, ensuring the recruiting process aligned directly with NAIT’s values of respect, creativity, collaboration, accountability and celebration.
Her office décor is deliberate. On video calls, the backdrop is not law degrees but her children’s artwork. “I am a human being, a colleague, and ready to talk legal matters,” she says. The drawings often become an icebreaker, surprising her colleagues and shifting tense conversations into calmer problem-solving discussions. She appreciates that NAIT encourages this authenticity. It’s a workplace, she says, that recognizes people as individuals, professionals with full and meaningful lives outside the office. This support allows Fuhrer to show up more grounded, empathetic and effective in her work.
That emphasis on humanity runs through her definition of the in-house role. “Law without people is meaningless. People are the reason law exists. So, be a person,” she says. She spends significant time at coffee breaks with colleagues, team meetings, and internal seminars, not because every session raises immediate legal issues, but because understanding what colleagues are trying to achieve lets her anticipate where problems will emerge and which priorities matter when demands collide.
The pace and ambiguity will not suit every lawyer. It requires the ability to be agile and pivot when a colleague asks her, or others on her team, to join a meeting within 15 minutes, share a view, and then adjust on the fly. She may do a quick search and then “trust my instincts and… know when to hit pause and say, Okay, I’m going to come back to you with a question, an answer, in an hour or so,” she says. Leaders are not asking for detailed memos or case citations; they want advice they can act on immediately and explanations they can understand without translation.
For younger lawyers considering in-house, especially in the public education sector, she is clear that technical ability alone is not enough. “Be prepared to give your legal opinion, but don’t be shy to offer your opinion on practical or business considerations as well,” she says. The legal view is only one piece of the decision, and lawyers who value hierarchy or see disagreement as a threat will find the role frustrating. She looks for colleagues who are comfortable within a broader leadership group, ready to listen before giving advice, and who remember that “a legal solution is useless if your client doesn’t understand it.”