Enwave Energy Corporation keeps cities comfortable in every season, delivering low-carbon district energy that supports local resiliency and long-term sustainability goals. Behind the scenes, a small legal team works to keep operations just as efficient.

Created in 2021, the legal department started lean, with just a few entities to manage. The work was straightforward but largely manual, spread across aging spreadsheets, scattered folders and outdated Word documents.

“We had this one giant Word doc that held all the entity details,” says Angelyne Gagnon, Enwave’s corporate law clerk. “It sort of worked, but it wasn’t easy to read, update or share. It definitely wasn’t built for the way we work today.”

The Challenge

A Small Team, Growing Demands

Enwave’s in-house legal department was intentionally small at the start, with just three lawyers and one law clerk supporting a manageable portfolio. For a while, the system worked. Entity information lived in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and SharePoint folders, and Angelyne kept everything organized as best she could.

But as the company grew, so did the requests. Finance needed officer lists, operations needed permit information, tax needed to verify CRA numbers, and every request landed on legal’s desk, eventually piling up and pulling time away from other priorities.

“People would send over forms to fill out, but they really only needed one or two pieces of information. It took time to decode what they needed, dig it up and send it back,” Angelyne recalls. The challenge wasn’t the number of entities. It was the volume of requests, all tied to data that wasn’t easy to access or share. 

Manual Processes That Didn’t Scale

With only a few entities, routine tasks like drafting annual resolutions seemed doable, until the time started adding up. “I actually love drafting documents,” Angelyne says. “But when you’re manually adjusting the same resolution over and over, it gets tedious fast.” 

Each year brought a new round of almost-identical documents that needed to be customized one by one. Without automation or templates, it just became a repetitive annual event. 

At the same time, corporate records had to be maintained manually — scanning folders, tracking changes and making sure the right version was in the right hands. The legal team was organized, but the system wasn’t built for scale. And as other departments began relying more on legal for operational support, that issue became harder to ignore.

“We had a giant Word document with all our entity info. It wasn’t searchable. You had to zoom in to 200% just to read it,” she says. “The system may have worked on paper but it wasn’t sustainable. It was time to build something better.”

As more departments turned to legal — for support, for example, finance needing KYC details and operations asking for license info — it became clear that a self-serve solution was needed. The team needed a centralized system that could maintain control over records while allowing others to access what they needed, without creating a bottleneck.

The Solution

Athennian stood out as a solution because it offered both structure and flexibility. It could house corporate records, support document automation and eventually provide self-serve access for teams across the business. “We weren’t just solving a legal problem. We were trying to build an entity management system that worked for everyone,” notes Angelyne.

Centralizing Records for Easy Access

Before Athennian, legal information was buried across disconnected platforms. Now, all core entity records, like director lists, registrations and formation details, are in one place. “No more guessing where something lives. It’s searchable, shareable and easy to maintain.”

Auditors get secure links, and internal teams can get answers in just a few clicks — straightforward changes that have saved hours for Enwave’s legal team.

Automating Annual Compliance

One of the first wins was automating the annual resolution process. Enwave’s entities share similar structures, which meant the same documents were being recreated manually again and again. With customized templates, the legal team now bulk-generates filings, cutting time and reducing errors.

“I still love drafting but not when it’s the same resolution 20 times. This gives me back hours I can spend on more meaningful work,” Angelyne says.

Controlled Access for Collaboration

Enwave is gradually rolling out access to other departments, starting with finance and operations.  The goal is to provide visibility without sacrificing control. "Teams like operations don’t need everything all the time from us,” Angelyne explains. “They just need documents like permit details or license info. Athennian lets us share that data without sharing the whole vault.”

Even before full rollout, limited ‘overview’ access has already cut down on internal requests. Teams can look up the basics, like entity names or officer rosters, on their own, freeing up legal’s time.

Simple Enough to Scale 

For Enwave, Athennian isn’t just about automating, it’s about making the work sustainable. That includes leveraging interns and law students to help enrich the platform with property data, permit details and filings across jurisdictions. 

“It doesn’t take weeks of training. I can hand off a task and use the audit trail to track it. It’s simple enough to learn, but structured enough that I can trust the outcome.”

The Result

Enwave’s legal team is early in their transformation, but the impact is already clear: 

• Time savings: Repetitive work like resolutions now takes a fraction of the time.
• Greater access: Key data is searchable and shareable, reducing bottlenecks.
• Improved collaboration: Other departments can get what they need without waiting on legal.

Looking Ahead

The next step for Enwave is migrating more entities and data into Athennian. “We’ve already saved time. And once the rest of the business is in the system too, the broader team will be working from the same playbook.”

Legal is no longer chasing documents or decoding requests. They’re building a reliable, centralized hub that helps the entire company move faster with confidence.