Lexpert magazine features articles and columns on developments in legal practice management, deals and lawsuits of interest in Canada, the law and business issues of interest to legal professionals and businesses that purchase legal services.
Issue link: https://digital.carswellmedia.com/i/1547047
58 www.canadianlawyermag.com TOP LITIGATION LAW BOUTIQUES 2026 regime is perceived to be friendlier to the plaintiff 's side. Our regulatory practice is quite broad and involves public inquiry work and dealing with regulatory organizations. A group of my colleagues is doing a lot of work right now for an accounting regulator, investigating large accounting firms. Q: One respondent described your firm as one that sees the big picture and liti- gates to win. What does that mean in practice when you're advising a client on strategy? A: If we're acting for an institution in an inquest or a large public inquiry, we do a fairly intensive deep dive with the client at the front end into what their objectives are, what they want the recommendations to say, where the sensitive areas are. You start by thinking about what you want the outcome to be at the end and then work to build the case and the evidence toward that. A couple of years ago, my partner Nader Hasan defended Umar Zameer, who was acquitted of all charges, including first-degree murder, in the death of a Toronto police officer, in an inci- dent where Zameer believed he was being attacked by what was in fact an undercover officer approaching his car. that to several different areas. What we're expert in is convincing adjudicators about something and learning what we need to convince them about on a case-by-case basis. Adair Goldblatt Bieber LLP Adair Goldblatt Bieber LLP has been an ever-present since 2018–19. Peer feedback in this report points to the firm's lean staffing model and its stated priority on work-life balance alongside growth. "This firm, unlike any other, considers work-life balance, a healthy office culture, and delivering excellent work to be more important than growth and billable hours," says one respondent. Jordan Goldblatt, managing partner at Adair Goldblatt Bieber in Toronto, spoke with CL about what has changed at the firm since it began winning recognition. Q: You've won in every cycle since 2018– 19. What's changed about the firm's practice in that time, and what hasn't? A: What's stayed the same is that since we started the firm, we've always tried to have a culture where we took the work extremely seriously but tried not to take ourselves so seriously and gave space for people to find the way they wanted to practise. We wanted to do top-tier work in a way that was authentic to the people doing it. What's changed since we started in 2018 is the complexity and size of the files have expanded. When we started, it was prob- ably rare for a file to support more than two lawyers. Now, we have a good chunk of those files in the office, so part of our growth has been trying to keep the core feeling and ethos of the firm consistent while the nature of the mandates has expanded. Q: Your lean staffing model came up specifically in peer feedback, along The focus was always on the defence w h i l e a c k n o w l e d g i n g t h e t r a g e d y throughout. We don't celebrate an acquittal; we recognize justice was done. You always have to look at how you're going to get the best outcome, bearing in mind that your audience isn't just your client. It's the adju- dicator, the court, the tribunal, or the jury deciding the case, and how your approach will be perceived publicly afterward. Q: Several respondents also mentioned your class-action advocacy as a distin- guishing strength. What draws the firm to that kind of work? A: It's really the flexibility of the firm to master complexity in various areas of the law with the teams we're able to build. We have people who've done securities class actions, competition law class actions, and product liability class actions. It's the ability to use our advocacy skills and our knowledge of how the Class Proceedings Act regime works and quickly master the subject matter with the help of the client or experts. In the modern world, developing special- ties is often the way people have gone, and we do have subject matter specialists, but I think we're closer to the old model: master advo- cacy, evidence, and procedure, and then apply "In the modern world, developing specialties is often the way people have gone, and we do have subject matter specialists, but I think we're closer to the old model: master advocacy, evidence, and procedure, and then apply that to several different areas" Paul Le Vay, Stockwoods LLP SPECIAL REPORT