Cost savings and business transformation have defined Staples Canada’s legal and HR functions since 2021, with Adrian Lang a central part of the change. She didn’t hesitate to expand her legal department soon after she took on the role, moving from a team of one to five. “I was able to demonstrate significant immediate cost savings by building an internal team, which is the point of having a captive in-house team – it should save you legal costs, and it did,” she says.
Lang’s strategy is all numbers. “You need the data to do a proper assessment of where your spend is and then you can justify saying, ‘I can bring in an expert in this area and I will save this amount.’ Otherwise, it’s a bit of a guessing game as to what you could save.” She broke down legal spend by business unit and tracked every dollar, making the case for hiring in-house airtight.
Staples’ transformation, which began after its 2017 acquisition by Sycamore Partners, continues to accelerate. The company’s B2B business has surged, with Lang overseeing a string of acquisitions. “We’ve done four acquisitions since 2021, all in the B2B space, acquiring other smaller B2B entities that were complementary to the business,” she says. Integration, not just the deal itself, is what matters most. “The real key to the success in the acquisition is the subsequent integration,” she says.
With three CEOs over the past four years, Lang’s focus has been on maintaining stability. “From my perspective as chief legal officer, my role during these transitions is to offer continuity and support – not just to the incoming and outgoing CEOs, but also to the broader leadership team,” she explains.
Lang has also pushed for technological change, ditching what she calls “a very expensive document repository” for an AI-powered contract management platform. For in-house counsel, she says, the big worry is “the contracts, what we don’t know, what’s lurking either that legal never saw, or things so far back that no one in the current business knows.” The new system automates searches, flags renewal dates, and lets business units track their own contracts. Colleagues outside legal “can more actively engage with us on the platform, which is terrific, because then they also feel like they have a bit more visibility into their own contract base,” she says.
Privacy and cyber risk are at the forefront. “It really is an ever-changing area from a regulatory perspective, particularly in Quebec,” she says. “One of the key jobs is to just stay ahead of what the requirements are, what’s coming, are we changing quickly enough, are we compliant?”
Lang’s portfolio expanded again when she assumed the role of chief human resources officer. The role had connections to her original legal mandate. “We see overlap on our employee issues that we tackle in legal,” she says. Every senior leader, she insists, should be an HR expert, with strong people management and organizational development skills.
Looking ahead, Lang doesn’t mince words about the challenges for the business: labour shortages, talent retention, rising costs, and supply chain instability. “Whether that’s because of tariffs or supply chain issues, that’s a real struggle in retail and for our partners,” she says. AI and automation, meanwhile, have delivered quick wins, from robotics to smarter contract management. “We put robotics into some of our warehouses, which have been game-changing, both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, but also for the satisfaction of staff who work in the warehouse. It’s a more pleasant experience than it was with the loud conveyors and all the rest. Robots are very quiet,” she says.
For lawyers eyeing an in-house move, Lang advises lawyers to broaden their outlook. “You have to be able to think beyond the legal realm. Nothing drives me crazier than in-house lawyers who speak of their business partners as their clients. Because they shouldn’t be clients, they’re our partners. I am part of the business; the business is part of what I do. We are integral to the success of the company,” she says.
Managing outside counsel, she says, comes down to two things: clear communication and avoiding surprises. “The single most important piece of that relationship for success is communication – clear communication on both sides, both what the expectations are from the client side, including cost and scope,” she says. “And then the other piece of that that goes hand in hand with communication is no surprises. I don’t know very many people who like surprises, but they certainly don’t like surprises in the work context.”
Lang is a judge for the 2026 Canadian Law Awards. Nominations are now open and will close on January 30, 2026.