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TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - June 8, 2015) - Adrian Lang, Associate General Counsel for BMO Financial Group, received the Litigation Management Award at a gala dinner held in Toronto on June 1. The Canadian General Counsel Awards is the only national programme in Canada to recognize excellence in the In-House Counsel community.

Ms. Lang is the head of litigation and dispute resolution for BMO Financial Group's Canadian Personal and Commercial business. In that role, she oversees dispute resolution for the bank's retail and commercial businesses across Canada.

In awarding the honour to Ms. Lang, judges noted her effective management of external advisers and 'quarterbacking' of overall legal strategy across multi-jurisdictional issues.

"Adrian is an accomplished litigator and business leader who is very deserving of this award," said Simon Fish, General Counsel for BMO Financial Group. "We are also proud of Adrian's many community commitments and her efforts to help others advance in the legal profession - qualities which we value highly at the bank."

Ms. Lang's role, within BMO's Personal and Commercial Banking Group, involves a wide array of matters from class action lawsuits, major fraud recovery claims and defences, through to and including operational issues at a branch level. She is also responsible for implementing BMO's goal of moving to an alternate fee arrangement (AFA) model of outsourcing litigation, As well, she is involved with other BMO initiatives aimed at streamlining processes, and reducing both costs and litigation timelines.

Her accomplishments since joining BMO in 2013 include successfully directing the strategy on a number of significant and high profile cases for the bank and introducing polices which have helped to streamline litigation and reduce the overall case load by:

• Establishing a policy of only opening files with AFAs in place;
• Increasing the overall use of AFAs in her team by about 60 per cent in the first year; and
• Introducing a voluntary dispute resolution program for all litigation, bank wide, with streamlined processes and strict timelines to get to resolution more quickly.

Background

Prior to joining the bank, Adrian Lang was a partner with Stikeman Elliott's Toronto litigation group. She has been recognized by The Canadian Legal Lexpert® Directory as a leading practitioner in the areas of Class Actions, Litigation - Securities, Litigation - Directors' & Officers' Liability, and Litigation - Corporate Commercial; by Lexpert as a Leading Cross Border Litigation Lawyer; By the Lexpert/American Lawyer Top 500 Litigation Lawyers in Canada; The Best Lawyers in Canada for corporate and commercial litigation, and class actions litigation; and by Benchmark Canada, the Guide to Canada's Leading Litigation Firms and Attorneys. She was named a "Litigator to Watch" by Lexpert®'s survey of Canadian cross-border litigators in 2009 and was recognized by Lexpert® in 2008 as one of the "Leading Lawyers Under 40".

Her team at BMO recently won the Benchmark In-House Litigation Team of the year (2015), and she was awarded the Community Builder Award by the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association, for her contributions to her community.

Ms. Lang is on the Advisory Board of the Class Action Defences Quarterly, is a past director of The Advocates' Society, sits on the Advisory Board of Young Women in Law, sits on the Board of Governors of Royal St. George's College and is currently the Chair of the Board of Canadian Stage.

About BMO Financial Group

Established in 1817, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of approximately $633 billion as of April 30, 2015, and more than 47,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.