The Lawyers Weekly - May 13, 2011

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
May 13, 2011 | 21

BUSINESS
CAREERS

Merger mania: more to come?

GEOFF KIRBYSON

Ogilvy Renualt LLP has blazed a trail as the first Canadian law firm to join an international juggernaut, but if the hunches of legal experts are correct, it won’t be long until others have followed in its footsteps.

The Montreal-based firm will officially
merge with Norton Rose Group out of the U.K.
on June 1, creating one of the top 10 biggest
law firms in the world.

The ground-breaking move was driven by increasingly internationally-focused clients, says Jean Bertrand, senior partner and managing partner of Ogilvy Renault’s Montreal office. He says the Canadian market for legal services is fairly flat and while there is some potential for growth out West because of the energy and resource sectors, there’s nothing to indicate any booms in business are pending in major centres such as Toronto and Montreal.

“Our clients are looking outside of Canada to grow. Although we have very loyal clients, the reality is the kind of business we do represents an ever-smaller portion of their legal spend. Because they’re looking to growing markets to expand their sales, to the extent we want to follow them, we have to have a credible platform internationally to support their growth,” Bertrand says.

Ogilvy Renault has about 450 lawyers, including former prime minister, Brian Mul-roney, in offices in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Ottawa and Calgary. The new Norton Rose will have more than 2,500 lawyers at 38 offices around the globe and generate about $1 billion annually in revenue.

Bertrand says both firms believe that their marriage will enable them to compete much more efficiently around the globe and to secure new mandates, which would not have been possible for either one on a stand-alone basis.

“When we combine our list of experience
and expertise, our offering is a lot more cred-
ible and can rival any player on the global
scene,” he says.
Bertrand says he has been “pleasantly sur-
prised” by the response from the firm’s clients
after they were informed of the merger.

“We thought it would be interesting for them but we underestimated to what extent it would be appealing to them. We’ve been overwhelmed by the reception. Clients are coming to us and saying, ‘we want to meet your new partners and we want to do business with them,’ ” he says.

(Energy) is a lawyer-
intensive business...
[Energy projects]
involve very complex
contracts... It’s not
like opening another
McDonald’s on
the corner.

Bruce MacEwen
Adam Smith Esq.., LLC
PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTON ROSE GROUP
Norton Rose Group’s London office. Canada’s Ogilvy Reanult LLP will merger with Norton Rose in June.

Bertrand says he was happy to see a significant number of Ogilvy Renault’s international clients were willing to reconsider relationships with law firms in other countries or at least add another legal supplier to their list for new projects.

“What is becoming clear is that although these clients are looking for a key player when they go abroad, they’re not necessarily being given the top priority treatment when they go to a big U.K. or American law firm that they’re receiving in Canada. They may not represent as important a player as they do in Canada (to those firms). Hence, they’re interested in working with us,” he says.

Norton Rose is far from the only international firm sniffing around Canada for potential merger partners, according to Warren Smith, managing director of The Counsel Network, a Vancouver-based national legal recruitment firm.

“I’ve talked to partners (in Canada) about
being part of a beachhead merge or growing
out a presence for U.S. and U.K. firms. Those
are definitely on deck,” he says.

The prospect of being part of a global behemoth that can step into more sophisticated deals and work with even larger multi-national corporations would be very attractive to a number of Canadian firms, Smith says.

There’s no question there will be further
mergers, according to Ian Holloway, who is
slated to become dean the University of Cal-
gary’s faculty of law in July, but only time — and
results — will tell if it becomes an epidemic.

We thought it would
be interesting for
[our clients] but we
underestimated to
what extent it
would be appealing
to them. We’ve been
overwhelmed by
the reception.