If you're talking about the politically charged environment, I'm not going to make equivalent the experience I had, for example, working at the National Capital Commission. There are several different quantum steps between the two; nevertheless, there were issues that polarized the local community in which the NCC was involved during the 19 years I was there. Certainly dealing with very strongly held views, frequently on opposing sides of issues, was a real learning experience for me, and learning how to navigate in those waters was important.
I want to bring this nuance to it. As legal counsel you end up giving different types of advice. The rule I always held first and foremost was that if I'm acting purely in the role of legal counsel and there's a decision to be taken, the objective I want to achieve is that the decision-maker is a fully informed buyer at the time of making the decision. It's frequently not the case that the lawyer is making the decision; he's providing the legal analysis that supports the decision-maker in moving forward.
That's not always the case, depending on where you are in the management structure of the organization. As I became part of the management team at the NCC, it became one thing to have my lawyer's hat on and advise on the legal implications of what they were proposing to do or the options they were considering. My job was to make sure they were fully conversant with them. Then, as a member of the management team, I had a role to play there in offering my thoughts on the preferred way to go.