LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
APRIL/MAY 2017 43
| BOUTIQUES & SPECIALTY FIRMS |
PERRY DELLELCE
Office: Toronto
Focus: Corporate Finance
GROWING UP
WITH YOUR CLIENTS
WILDEBOER DELLELCE LLP
When five partners le Stikeman Elliot
LLP to set up Wildeboer Del-
lelce as a standalone corporate-finance boutique in 1993, Bay Street
must have thought they were crazy, says Perry Dellelce, the boutique's
managing partner. "We knew we weren't going to take Air Canada,
CIBC, Nortel or Bombardier with us. But we knew we didn't leave our
brains behind."
Aer that, he says, "it was just contacts and hustle, and it worked."
e young boutique played to the entrepreneur class and did things like
dress casually long before casual Fridays became vogue. It also did eq-
uity for fees, "or what we now call alternative fee arrangements, long
before Silicon Valley made it hip to do. We were less bureaucratic and
more flexible right from the very beginning and that really led to a bond
with entrepreneurs."
From 1993 to 2001, all of the firm's entrepreneurs were practising
technology law. When the tech bubble burst, "the music stopped and
we didn't have a chair. We were cut in half." Wildeboer Dellelce decided
to expand beyond straight corporate financings into areas such as lend-
ing, real estate, investment funds, mutual funds and structured prod-
ucts, "which is all part of the same thing — it's all corporate finance. If
you took our group and put it into a large firm, we'd be a big corporate
finance group."
Today, with 35 lawyers, the way Wildeboer Dellelce competes
against larger competing law firms is by keeping their billable rate on
day-to-day matters 20 to 30 per cent lower than the big firms charge,
"and we can afford to do that because our infrastructure is less." On
large transformational deals and high-risk, time-sensitive matters, Del-
lelce says, they still bill the same as large firms.
As for their core strategy, it is focused on relationships. Large firms
are better positioned to take on mid-sized deals now. However, Dellelce
says that "we've grown up with a lot of these companies. We have very
strong personal and business relationships with them. We can and do
continue to service them in good times and in bad."
thousands of documents." He says his tiny firm can use these systems, and other technologies, to match
"and I dare say out-do" some of the larger law firms that represent opposing parties.
Being small also has its advantages. One is that boutiques usually do not have to have a mandatory
retirement age that forces senior partners out. "is, I think, is one of the downsides of large firms," he
says. "As senior partners grow older, they realize that, once they reach 62 or 65 years of age, they are going
to be out the door notwithstanding that they may be in the best years of knowledge and service to both
their clients and the firm."
At the end of the day, he says, the best strategy for successfully competing as a boutique is "strictly
reputation," which means having the best lawyers, some of them older big-firm refugees. at's because a
lot of the construction companies have come to the conclusion that "it's best to find out who is the leader
in the industry and use that person," regardless of where they work.
