BUSINESS
CAREERS
Mentors pass knowledge
to the next generation
Global
Continued From Page 21
MATTHEW CHUNG
They’re three corporate lawyers
closing deals on Toronto’s Bay
Street for national law firm Stikeman Elliot LLP.
The gap in experience between
Martin Langlois, 43, Justin Parappally, 35 and Christen Daniels, 29,
is significant. But that’s just the
point of the firm’s mentoring initiative, which the three lawyers credit
with helping them progress in
their careers.
With Langlois, a partner at the
firm, acting as mentor to both Parappally, an associate for eight years
at Stikeman, and Daniels, who
became an associate at the firm in
2009, Langlois’ knowledge is being
passed on to the next generation
on a daily basis.
“Some people look for a mentor
strictly from a career development
perspective,” said Daniels. “Others,
it is important to have a mentor
they feel comfortable approaching
on different matters. I straddle
both categories.”
“[We] have a very personal
relationship and he is very
approachable,” Daniels said about
Langlois. “I know I can rely on his
advice.”
Meanwhile Parappally, who
chose Langlois as his mentor after
having him as a mentor while he
was an articling student, said the
relationship has grown from day
one “because he realizes mentoring
is absolutely critical in the law firm
environment. He takes the train-
ing very seriously and he is avail-
able.”
Daniels and Parappally have
developed strong ties with
Langlois. Their relationships have
been nurtured by working side-by-
side on cases, by their shared inter-
ests and Langlois’ generosity with
his time at a firm—consistently
ranked among Canada’s top
employers—that has an estab-
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agement and strategy on a
worldwide basis.”
Yet ultimately, clients don’t
care about the way law firms are
structured —and “all they want
is quality advice and quality
service on a consistent basis,”
offers Parish.
“Over the last 10 years, the
world has become extremely
competitive. It is absolutely a
single marketplace out there
and clients are becoming more
demanding and increasingly
looking at alternative billing
arrangements.”
For instance, he explains that
financial institutions comprise a
significant chunk of Norton
Rose Group’s client base.
“They have panels that run
competitions and quite happily
make firms sing for their supper.”
Parish believes that if they
haven’t already, big Canadian
firms will experience that height-
ened competition when their
major clients, looking to expand
their business internationally,
will demand increased competi-
tiveness among their legal ser-
vice providers.
In the meantime, the structure of large law firms will
change over time, predicts Warren Smith, managing director
for the B.C. office of national
legal recruitment firm, The
Counsel Network.
“They will take the form of a
pyramid, with less people on
top than on the bottom. The
path to equity partnership will
be a lot less certain for lawyers
coming into the system following the introduction of income
partnerships over the past decade,” he explains.
“There are a fixed number of
blue-chip clients available in the
market that can bear the rates
big firms want to charge, and
only so many partners who can
do the work at that level.”
Smith also doesn’t expect
firms to significantly add to
their roster of lawyers (exclud-
ing mergers) as they once did.
“You won’t hear national firms
at 100 lawyers today and at 200
lawyers in five years—whereas
you did hear that type of time-
line five years ago.
“There’s a stabilizing force in
terms of how big firms can or
want to get for the market size
they’re in.”
However, big firms could be
paying big money — as they are in
the U.S. in the millions of dol-
lars—to lure “rainmaking” part-
ners who in turn can attract major
clients in the ever-growing com-
petitive landscape, says Cameron.
He expects that environment
will find mid-sized firms follow-
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Canada Inc. All rights reserved.
ing Ogilvy’s lead and merging
with larger international firms,
moving from being second-tier
firms to ones with global
arrangements.
“That scenario would be very
attractive for Toronto firms with
maybe an office in Vancouver or
in Calgary that figure it’s time to
go worldwide and leapfrog into
the big leagues.”
Cameron sees practice areas
within large firms continuing to
be organized as national groups
and moving more toward indus-
try-based models where they
may focus on mining, oil and
gas and private-public partner-
ships, as national accounting
firms in Canada have done for
years.
In fact, accounting firms
helped fuel the rise of large law
firms here.
“Many national firms that
popped up in the ‘90s were
reacting to the emergence of
huge multidisciplinary account-
ing firms, such as Ernst & Young
and KPMG, and felt they had to
compete against them,” says
Cameron, who worked as a
chartered accountant for Thorne
Riddell, a predecessor firm to
KPMG, from 1978 to 1983.
“Some firms envisioned having
accountants as partners, but
many lawyers didn’t want that
and became national to compete
with accountants.”
He believes the soon-to-be
enacted alternative business
structure provisions of the U.K.’s
Legal Services Act that allow
non-lawyers or corporate enti-
ties to own and manage law
offices could further change the
shape of large law firms in this
country.
“In the U.K., you could have
100 small-to-mid-size firms get
franchised as part of a larger
operation that provides legal
and business-related services in
locations such as bookstores—
and there’s no reason this
wouldn’t happen in Canada as
well.”
However, Cameron adds that
it could all depend on what
happens in the U.S., where out-
side investment in law firms is
only permitted in Washington,
D.C. and non-lawyer ownership
is capped at 25 per cent. Legis-
lation pending in North Caro-
lina would also allow outside
investment.
U.S. national law firm,
Jacoby & Meyers, has challenged state prohibitions on
non-lawyer ownership in New
York, Connecticut and New
Jersey, arguing the ban denies
firms the ability to raise outside
capital—a “critical source of
funding” that “dramatically
impedes access to legal services
for those otherwise unable to
