Lexpert Magazine

46 LEXPERT MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 2016 Sandra Rubin is a Toronto-based writer and strategic consultant. | MID-SIZE FIRMS | and getting a portion of their work, as op- posed to trying to get everything. For ex- ample, one of our larger clients is a large Canadian dairy. e litigation files require two, three lawyers tops. We do 80 per cent of their litigation, but when they go out to do a $300-million financing, that's not go- ing to be us." THOMAS KEAST, managing partner of Watson Goepel LLP in Vancouver, says mid-size firms must embrace their "mid- sizeness" and believe in their talent to suc- ceed. "We like to think we're courageous, that we can do just about anything — and that's what we try to do. We try to hire good people in the first place and then re- tain them, which can be a battle with the big-size firms. "For a while, we went through a battle where we felt like the farm team for the big firms. People would come here, get some good experience then fly off to a better of- fer. at will always be a challenge." Watson Goepel, with "nine and maybe soon-to-be 10" partners out of 35 lawyers, practises insurance law, family law and litigation. "In terms of differentiating our- selves from other firms, we really do have some strengths, and they come from the individual practices that have developed. It's not so much that we compete with other mid-size firms as it is we just compete for business by trying to be the best at the things we do well." To keep its people and build its expertise, the partnership is very loyal to its people, he says. "We have a woman who was with us — great person, great lawyer — she went in-house and now has a child, and she may be coming back. at'll be on probably a three-day week and probably half of that from home. It works for us because she's very good and a very good person." e firm also works to provide a better lifestyle, including a truly collegial envi- ronment where partners are pleased if a sixth-year associate dockets 1,300 or 1,400 hours. "We don't have anybody putting in 50 deals a month and we couldn't make money. e real estate market changed. You had guys doing it for $500, $600 out of their basement apartments. We couldn't compete with that. "Even downtown, you've got a bunch of three- or four-man shops whose overheads are awfully low, so you get a 60- or 65-year- old lawyer, and as long as your file's not overly paper-intensive, they'll do it." e upshot, says Sachdeva, is that mid- size firms like his are being forced to iden- tify areas that fall between the cracks for both larger and smaller competitors. "e pressure from the small firms has forced mid-size firms in the big cities to simply leave certain markets. If you look at a lot of downtown firms, a lot of them aren't in the commercial real estate market anymore or they won't do condos. ey're out of estate- planning work; unless it's really big, they can't compete with the boutiques and the smaller shops on price." Pallett Valo has responded to market forces by concentrating on construction law, insolvency and commercial real estate deals of a certain size. "You have to know your marketplace, and then we're better on price. We're not gunning for high-end deals that the big boys live off of. ere's a sweet spot for us that we try to stay within. If we get the other work we're happy, but that's not where we're spending our mar- keting dollars and time. "I don't need 20 people to do a normal receivership. I'm happy with a big client 2,400 hours a year as a partner and bang- ing their head against the wall and possibly losing their marriage or whatever outside interests they may have had. "Everybody implicitly understands this isn't a place where you're going to be ex- pected to ruin your life because of the cli- ents or the fellow partners," he says. "at's just not expected." DON MCCARTY, managing partner at Lavery Lawyers in Montréal, says the biggest challenge for the larger mid-size firms like his is branding (although he'd probably never use that word) and differen- tiation. "It's just to get the message out that we're big enough, we have all the capabili- ties of any national or international firm in terms of size and abilities and departments, etc. — and that we're able to deliver those services for a price that's sometimes more interesting to the client. It's not that easy to do. It gets lost in a sea of clutter. e mes- sages from legal firms are all over the place." Another challenge the firm faces — and it's a common one for mid-size firms that are local or regional — "is to get people to realize that we're actually capable in many circumstances of doing work outside of Q uébec. We were in the Supreme Court recently on a case we pleaded in BC. We did a transaction in Northern Ireland recently for a major client. So we don't actually need an office in every city in the world to be able to do some work there." Asked who Lavery, which has 210 law- yers in four Q uébec offices, sees as its main competitors, McCarty says "the Dentons, the Faskens, the Blakes of the world. e other mid-size firms are our competitors and the accounting firms are also starting to become more significant." But boutiques are also nipping at Lav- ery's heels, he adds, especially in commer- cial litigation, and small firms have been taking the occasional bite. "I'd say the chal- lenges for mid-size firms are not dissimilar to the challenges faced by the legal indus- try overall, but the additional challenge we have is differentiating ourselves at both ends of the spectrum — from the mega- firms and the smaller firms that are more specialized. Our challenge is differentiat- ing ourselves from both groups." LISA BORSOOK > WEIRFOULDS LLP "The infrastructure associated with being a mid-size firm is really different. I have four people in my business-development department — not, as some firms do, 40 people — and that contributes to the price point."

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