The Lawyers Weekly - July 1, 2011

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
July 1, 2011 | 21

BUSINESS
CAREERS

BIG LAW FIRMS PART ONE OF A THREE-PART SERIES

THE HISTORY OF CANADA’S TOP LAW FIRMS

Big fish in a small pond

CHRISTOPHER GULY

A catchy moniker, coined over a decade ago, defined the A-list of Canadian law firms for the better part of the last decade.

Seven Bay Street firms— Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, Davies Ward Phillips & Vine-berg LLP, Goodmans LLP, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, Stike-man Elliott LLP and Torys LLP— were dubbed the Seven Sisters around the turn of the millenium.

“On law school campuses, an offer from a Seven Sisters firm was seen as more valuable than from a firm doing comparable work outside the Seven Sisters,” explains Tim Leishman, who left his law practice in 1997 to co-found a professional services consultancy firm, now known as Firm Leader.

Leishman adds that the same held true for lateral recruiting in which the Sisters had the advantage of attracting leading lawyers from other firms.

He says the designation “wasn’t fair in many respects,” since it overlooked other top guns, such as Ogilvy Renault LLP and Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG) LLP, whose core practices (health law and mutual funds work in the

Canada’s biggest law firms usually have head offices on Bay Street in the Toronto core.

case of BLG) were not included in the criteria for Seven Sisters recognition.

“It was a tough characteriza-
tion to break out from for firms
outside of that group.”
However, Leishman believes
that over time, the Seven Sisters
designation has been “fading” as
a new paradigm, based on size
and reach, replaces it.

By the numbers, BLG, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP each have more than 700 lawyers and comprise Canada’s top three firms by head count.

All would be considered big
on a national basis if they were
based in the U.S., whose popula-
tion is nine times larger than
Canada’s, says Ward Bower, a
principal of U.S. legal consulting
firm, Altman Weil Inc.

geographic expansion by
relocating lawyers.”
Now, firms are growing by
looking further afield—at least
in the case of Ogilvy Renault
LLP, which joined the U.K.-
headquartered Norton Rose
Group on June 1. Now known as
Norton Rose OR LLP, Ogilvy
Renault LLP, with about 450
lawyers, is part of a network of
more than 2,600 lawyers in 38
offices around the world and
among the top 10 legal practices
on the planet.

“That’s a major development
in the marketplace that’s never
happened before on this scale,”
says Ottawa lawyer Jordan Fur-
long, a partner with law-firm
consultancy, Edge International,
who also runs the Law21.ca
blog. “That’s a truly global firm
coming into Canada.”
He explains that following
Baker & McKenzie coming
into Canada in 1962, other
American firms such as Dor-
sey & Whitney LLP, Shear-
man & Sterling LLP and most
recently Paul Weiss Rifkind
Wharton & Garrison LLP,
have crossed the border to set
up offices in Toronto.

While the Ogilvy Renault-Norton Rose international partnership is unprecedented in Canada, it could also set a new standard for the way firms conduct business in this country, argues Furlong.