“Taking calculated risks is where growth comes,” Jennifer Lau says. That willingness to step outside her comfort zone has defined her career, from moving to Brazil to practise law to embracing high-stakes complex transactions at TELUS. For Lau, her legal career isn’t about staying in a prescribed lane – it’s about asking, “What will make my career flourish and what will make me satisfied and happy with the career decisions I’ve made?” and then having “the willingness to jump in and embrace or create those opportunities,” she says.
Lau’s appetite for risk has shaped her approach at TELUS, where she leads major transactions across business units. She joined as Senior Counsel, M&A/TELUS Global Ventures in 2022 after working in-house at Barrick Gold Corporation and practising corporate law at Shearman & Sterling in Brazil.
Lau is currently at the centre of a $1.2 billion carve-out transaction and joint venture involving TELUS’ wireless tower infrastructure. “We made an announcement at the beginning of August about the creation of Terrion; we are carving out TELUS’ passive wireless infrastructure business as a standalone entity and have created Canada’s largest dedicated wireless tower operator in partnership with La Caisse,” she says. The deal, which closed on September 10, 2025, is “really fascinating, really exciting…a huge deal in the form of a transformative partnership involving complex infrastructure assets.”
Her track record extends beyond this most recent deal. Lau led the legal team on TELUS Health’s approximately $500 million acquisition of Workplace Options, as well as TELUS’ acquisition of Vivint Security Canada for $123 million. Early in her career, she had represented YM BioSciences in its $510 million acquisition by Gilead Sciences. She then drove the restructuring of Lupatech Group’s $300 million cross-border debt – a transaction that won the Global M&A Network’s Energy & Services Turnaround of the Year Award. At Barrick, she supported the $6.5 billion merger with Randgold Resources and a joint venture with Newmont that resolved an $18 billion hostile takeover.
Joint venture governance is one of the areas where Lau sees lawyers making a meaningful impact. “There are many opportunities for in-house counsel to guide efficiencies within an organization. Of course, there is there is the day-to-day business, but with joint ventures, there are many additional considerations and processes tied to the governance layer and accountability.” Leveraging her own deep experience, she’s focused on streamlining oversight and reporting, noting, “we need to do that piece effectively to support our business clients, in order to allow them to focus on running the operations; the oversight, governance and reporting aspects of a JV must be well-understood and efficiently managed. These things are critical to a well-functioning relationship for a business under a joint venture structure,” she says.
Lau has helped build the systems and culture that support TELUS’ legal function. She led the creation of an M&A Center of Excellence, which she continues to chair, bringing together a team of M&A lawyers who otherwise work independently. “The benefit of having this forum is that we have a place to come together to discuss issues, share new developments in the practice of M&A, and generally bounce ideas off of each other,” she says. She also led a budgeting streamlining project, making sure “everyone goes through the same process…connects with all the right people,” to ensure that there is “clarity and transparency around how budgeting decisions are made and translated into resourcing.”
Diversity and inclusion are also central to Lau’s work and identity. “I am, as I like to describe it, many intersectionalities,” she says. Among other things, she co-chairs an anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion committee at one of the world’s largest synagogues and sits on TELUS’ Inclusion Squad. “We've brought in speakers to talk about unconscious bias and psychological safety, as well as run learning circles related to indigenous reconciliation, addressing anti-Semitism, and combating Islamophobia” she says. She’s also helped guide conversations on “managing anxiety and working in a high-stakes environment.”
Legal innovation is another area where Lau is embracing change. “TELUS has developed our own AI platform called Fuel iX, to ignite the use of generative AI within enterprises. We are also constantly looking as a legal team to take advantage of the opportunities that technology brings us to improve our practice,” she says. She’s candid about the limitations of legal tech: “At this point, it's still in the experimentation phase. I've seen a lot of concepts that seem very exciting, but they're not quite ready for prime time yet.” She notes that while private practice firms may have the volume to justify certain technology platforms, in-house teams like hers must be more selective. “There are different markets for those tools and different use cases to support an in-house practice. We have not yet found an appropriate product for our in-house M&A-specific legal requirements, but…I'm sure there will be; it’s just a matter of time,” she says.
Her advice to lawyers – especially those interested in international work – is clear: take risks and embrace opportunities. Lau completed her JD/MBA in 2010 at the University of Toronto, and began her career in a securities practice at a leading Canadian firm. “Never in my wildest dreams in law school, did I ever think I was going to move to Brazil and practise law there, [but] this opportunity came up, so I learned Portuguese and wrote the New York bar. My career has benefited immensely from jumping into the deep end when these types of unique opportunities come up,” she says.
Lau was recognized as a Lexpert Rising Star in 2024, and is serving as a judge in the same awards this year.