Katherine Smirle – GC Powerlist
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Canada 2020

Financials

Katherine Smirle

Senior counsel and director, banking litigation (Canada and Caribbean) | Royal Bank of Canada

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Canada 2020

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Katherine Smirle

Senior counsel and director, banking litigation (Canada and Caribbean) | Royal Bank of Canada

About

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted prior to March 2020.

Kathrine Smirle has been an influential and innovative legal adviser at Royal Bank of Canada since 2010. During this time, she has spent almost her entire tenure advising on banking litigation and now directs the legal team responsible for litigation management in Canada and the Caribbean, as senior counsel and director of banking litigation at RBC Law Group. As senior counsel, Smirle provides highly specialised support and other legal advice in the area of bank law – including all of its regulations, payments, class action defence, and law in the area of lending, financing, recovery, tort, contract and competition. She sets and executes the strategic defence of banking litigation claims in both jurisdictions, and manages relationships with multiple external law firms. Her ability to hone in on pivotal issues – whether legal or operational – and to clearly and succinctly outline legal options has made her an invaluable colleague to numerous business partners. The respect and trust that she has earned within the bank has allowed her the freedom to appeal cases to the highest level of court in Canada and to advance new defences in law. She has a creative and collaborative approach to problem solving. Her dedication to her craft, her curiosity, creativity and her drive to continuously improve her practice and the law, has made her integral to the implementation and support of new initiatives within the bank, its Law Group and to disrupt the status quo of law in general. Embracing lean six sigma, Smirle initiated various grass roots projects to create efficiencies in processing investigations, litigation, documentation and streamlining communications between governmental agencies and the Bank. Since 2013, her projects have been held out as models to follow, and she has coached others on the virtues of process mapping, smoothing friction and rethinking the usual course Smirle is also an advocate for legal change and improvement. From the outset, she has heralded on the dangers of senior financial abuse in Canadian society and advised various professionals – inside and outside of the Bank – through presentations and articles. Today, she continues to educate legal professionals on joint defence agreements, alternative fee arrangements and cybersecurity concerns. Recently, as a leader in RBC Law Group, Smirle has leveraged Canadian paralegals to use their Common Law education in the Caribbean, and is in the process of launching an internal team webpage, and has worked on a project to revise the structure and flow of data collection in Law Group’s data management system. In her role managing multiple class actions Smirle’s dedication to the improvement of law is demonstrated in her legal strategies. She aggressively pursued the RBC v. BNS/Trang case to the Supreme Court of Canada where a unanimous finding in 2016 reversed a trend in Ontario which had made cost-effective recovery on a judgment against real property illusory. Her involvement was pivotal in the preparation of arguments and the successful strategy that brought this matter to conclusion.

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