The Lawyers Weekly - November 5, 2010

BUSINESS
CAREERS

G LEAVIN

gracefully

By Michael Benedict

id you hear the one about the senior partner
who was ushered out of the building without
access to his client files or email after he
gave two weeks notice? Or the associate who
worked crazy hours including weekends for five years
but was nevertheless docked a week’s pay when he left
the firm because he had exceeded his formal vacation
allowance? Or, and this one’s a doozy, about a top per-
former at a big firm for a dozen years who wanted to
join a boutique operation? He provided six weeks
notice, worked hard throughout that time, yet the firm
refused to pay him for the notice period. When he
asked why, the firm said that he wouldn’t be paid for
any hours worked after announcing his departure.
When he objected, a senior partner told him, “If you
don’t like it, you can always sue.”
Calgary’s Will Cascadden, an employment lawyer
who co-founded the boutique Spectrum HR Law LLP
earlier this year, has heard all these stories— and
more. Cascadden acknowledges that individual law-
yers can also behave badly when leaving a firm, but
their stories tend not to be as dramatic. “If you act
professionally,” he says, “the departure should be
D
smooth.” Cascadden adds, “I still have good relation-
ships with the four firms that I left.”
Typically, most of the bad behaviour and disputes
between departing lawyers and their firms involves
future relationships with current clients. Explains Cas-
cadden: “Say a lawyer wants to start his or her own
firm. Sometimes they keep it a secret and leave sud-
denly with a client list that they try to win over. That
only makes the lawyer needless enemies at the
departing firm.”
It can also have professional consequences. Most
law societies, including Alberta’s, have established
similar policies on how to treat clients when their law-
yer moves on. All agree that the client must be
informed, dispassionately, of three choices: stay with
the firm and be reassigned to another lawyer; stay
with the lawyer in his/her new role; or choose a differ-
ent lawyer altogether.
In Ontario, the Law Society of Upper Canada
(LSUC) says clients must be advised of these three
options in writing and in a timely manner, “whether
the parting is amicable or not.” The firm and departing
See Departing Page 25