1.  Stewart McKelvey Stirling Scales
Total Lawyers: 221

Offices: 6
Provinces: Nova Scotia; Newfoundland and Labrador; New Brunswick; Prince Edward Island
Lawyers by Office: Halifax: 95; St. John’s: 37; Saint John: 33; Moncton: 16; Charlottetown: 25; Fredericton: 15

Core Practice Areas:
Corporate/commercial; energy and natural resources; insurance; labour and employment; litigation; marine and environmental; property and real estate development; securities and corporate finance; tax; technology; and intellectual property.

Key Clients:
Four of the region’s largest entrepreneurial families: Bragg, Irving, Jodrey, and Sobey; Bank of Nova Scotia; Royal Bank of Canada; Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP; Stikeman Elliott LLP; McCarthy Tétrault LLP; Blakes Cassels & Graydon LLP; Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP; the Hibernia,Terra Nova, and proposed Hebron offshore oil production projects and crude transporter Newfoundland Transshipment; offshore gas production projects Sable and the proposed Deep Panuke; Emera Inc.; New Brunswick Power; Aviva Canada Inc.; TD Meloche Monnex Inc.; Allstate Insurance Company; ING Insurance; Zurich; The Co-operators; Royal & SunAlliance; Encon Group Inc.; AIG; Lombard Canada; Economical Insurance Group; and the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

Notable Mandates:
Counsel to Prince Edward Island in its constitutional challenge of the federal Fisheries Act; Canaport LNG Limited Partnership in onshore and offshore EPC contracts for the construction of the Canaport LNG Terminal; New Brunswick Power in international contract litigation for the supply of orimulsion fuel; Cooke Aquaculture in the consolidation of the east coast industry; New Brunswick in the TransCanada highway between the Quebec border and Fredericton and Route 95; John Deere Limited and John Deere Credit Inc. in a $20-million claim in receivership of a major equipment dealer; Archean Resources Ltd. on its sale to International Royalty Corp.; ING Insurance in Marche v. Halifax Insurance Co. before the Supreme Court of Canada on the issue of material change to risk; Crombie Real Estate Investment Trust in the trust creation, its acquisition of $800 million in real estate, $195 million in financing, and its $205-million initial public unit offering; and Group Danone, who through its affiliates, Compagnie Gervais Danone S.A., Société des Eaux de Volvic and S.A. des Eaux Minérales d’Evian, sold 100 per cent of the shares of Danone Waters of Canada Inc.

Star Alumni:
Supreme Court of Canada Justice Michel Bastarache; Nova Scotia Court of Appeal Chief Justice Michael MacDonald; Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice John Murphy; Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court of Appeal Justice Keith Mercer; Prince Edward Island Supreme Court justices John McQuaid, Gordon Campbell and David Jenkins; New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Stephen McNally; Karin McCaskill, senior vice-president, general counsel, and secretary, Sobey Inc.; Ross Langley, vice-president and general counsel, J.D. Irving, Limited; Claire Milton, corporate counsel, secretary and treasurer, High Liner Foods Inc.; Sean Casey, president, Padinox Inc.; Glen Dexter, president, Canadian International Capital Inc.; Robert Dexter, chair, Empire Limited and Maritime Travel Inc.; Ronald Keefe, president and CEO, Diagnostic Chemicals Limited; and Mark MacDonald, president and CEO, Bay Ferries Limited/Northumberland Ferries Limited.

Affiliations:
None.

The Firm:
Now one of Canada’s 20 largest law firms, Stewart McKelvey became Atlantic Canada’s first fully regional law firm in 1990 with the consolidation of four prominent firms, some dating as far back as Confederation. With 221 lawyers and 300 staff in six offices throughout Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador, the firm’s enviable client list includes Atlantic Canada’s largest companies and most significant offshore oil and gas development projects.

In 2006, the firm launched a formal, public client service initiative — Service First.  Michael Harrington, the St. John’s-based chair of the partnership board, stated that their clients expect and have the right to receive full value for the fee charged and Service First defines the standards of client service at Stewart McKelvey. To accommodate its clients’ increasingly complex national and international transactions, the firm has launched a cutting-edge extranet that allows clients secure access to their legal documents, a service offered by Canada’s leading national firms. Stewart McKelvey, whose alumni occupy in-house counsel positions at regional powerhouses such as Sobeys, J.D. Irving, and Highliner Foods, has also ramped up its client development strategy further with the launch of an alumni extranet, including a directory, to help former lawyers with the firm stay in contact with their former colleagues.

Another current challenge is to ensure corporate clients understand the firm’s lawyers have many sub-specializations enabling them to handle more esoteric legal issues, such as intellectual property, IT, environmental law, and class action litigation, says Harrington.

“We don’t want them to think that when something (unique) comes up, their regular law firm can’t handle it for them and take it to another firm,” Harrington says. With a 33-per-cent increase in revenue over the past few years, the firm’s business model of growing alongside their regional clients is clearly paying off. “A lot of our clients are expanding. Sobeys has become a national organization; it’s big in central Canada and strong in western Canada,” he says. Recognized as having one of the country’s leading energy practices, Stewart McKelvey is also prospering from servicing a thriving oil and gas industry that shows no signs of abating, despite the recent stalemate that has shelved Newfoundland’s Chevron-Hebron project. Says Harrington: “We’ve still got three projects producing offshore oil, producing a combined 8.5 million barrels a month. That is a very significant part of Canada’s daily commercial oil output.”

Offices: 7

Provinces: Nova Scotia; Newfoundland and Labrador; New Brunswick; Prince Edward Island
Lawyers by Office: Halifax (Summit Place): 64; Halifax (George Street): 48; St. John’s: 22; Moncton: 17; Fredericton: 14; Charlottetown: 8; Saint John: 7

Core Practice Areas:
Corporate finance and securities; corporate law and business transactions; energy and natural resources; taxation and personal services; technology and intellectual property; labour and employment; construction; dispute resolution; insurance; and real estate and planning.

Key Clients:
Golden Gate Capital; Trident Resources Corp; and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP.

Notable Mandates:
Counsel to underwriters of Crombie Real Estate Investment Trust’s $204-million initial public offering; represented Golden Gate Capital in Nova Scotia in its US$1-billion acquisition of all common shares of Geac Computer Corporation Limited; and counsel to Trident Resources Corp. in $500 million in financings.

Star Alumni:
Former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Frank McKenna; Court of Queen’s Bench judge Richard Bell; and associate Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia Deborah Smith.

Affiliations:
Lex Mundi.

The Firm:
The region’s second-largest law firm at 190 lawyers, McInnes Cooper significantly boosted its business law bench strength with its August 2005 merger with the 53-lawyer Halifax office of Patterson Palmer, giving the firm the strongest presence in the Maritimes’ financial hub. By early 2007, the firm hopes to combine its two Halifax offices — one at Summit Place, the other at the Royal Bank tower — into a single location. “(The merger) has gone very well. It’s given us a depth, particularly on the corporate finance and corporate law and business transaction side generally,” says Bernie Miller, who succeeded Wylie Spicer as CEO and managing partner in July.

This year, the partnership also adopted a new corporate governance model, passing the reigns of management to a younger 35-50 cohort, while the more senior partners continue to sit on the partnership board, chaired by George Cooper. As one of the senior partners put it, Miller recounts, “Shift happens.” The firm has also invested significantly in its intranet and knowledge-management communications platform over the past year, while courting prospective new clients such as RIM, which recently set up operations in Halifax. “We try to keep our ear close to the ground for opportunities. For regional clients that are going national, our goal is to stay with them and not have them feel they need to go national,” says Miller. With offices in all four Atlantic provinces, the firm’s key clients include McCain Foods Ltd., Clearwater Seafood Ltd., Bank of Nova Scotia and Secunda Marine Services, and the substantial Halifax-based clientele brought over by the defecting Patterson Palmer lawyers, including Erdene Gold Inc., Nova Gold Resources, Etruscan Resources, Bank of Montreal, Charlie Keating’s Ultramax Group of Companies, TrentonWorks, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Offices: 4

Provinces: Nova Scotia; Newfoundland and Labrador; New Brunswick; Prince Edward Island

Lawyers by Office: Halifax: 50; Fredericton: 22; St. John’s: 21; Charlottetown: 7

Core Practice Areas:
Corporate and commercial; insurance; litigation; labour and employment; estates and trusts; municipal and planning; real estate and leasing; technology and intellectual property; tax; and immigration.

Key Clients:
Bell Aliant; Aviva Canada Inc.; Canada Post; CIBC; CMPA; Emera Inc.; ING Insurance; Loblaw/Weston Companies; Lombard Canada Inc.; government of P.E.I. and affiliated agencies; McCain Group; Royal Bank of Canada; Air Canada; NB Power Group; and Zurich Insurance.

Notable Mandates:
General counsel to energy and telecommunication entities including governance, organizational, regulatory, environmental, and merger and acquisition matters; defence of professional negligence claims brought against medical, engineering, and design personnel; industrial contractors and design firms in design liability and construction claims; environmental class actions; counsel to offshore energy projects in obtaining project, regulatory, and environmental approvals.

Star Alumni:
Several regional supreme court judges; Newfoundland Chief Justice and former premier Clyde Wells; former Canadian Bar Association president, A. William Cox.

Affiliations:
Meritas; Risk Management Counsel of Canada.

The Firm:
The firm announced its intention to merge with Patterson Palmer in the provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. The effective date of the merger will be dependant upon the resolution of client conflicts, which is anticipated to occur shortly. In the meantime, it’s business as usual at the firm’s Halifax, St. John’s, Fredericton, and Charlottetown offices, with Danny Gallivan CEO and managing partner of the Halifax office. “Everybody’s enthusiastic and very committed. There is a lot of activity behind the scenes. This is a fairly complex transaction as there are 10 offices in four provinces,” he says. “Management of the conflicts in some cases is outside of our control. For example, if there’s a matter before the courts, it’s a question of letting the process run its course.” Once completed, the merger will give the firm the depth and resources to provide the complex legal services required by its clients as well as giving the firm the critical mass needed to invest in its infrastructure, says Gallivan. “The more lawyers you have, the more you can afford to invest in your service platform. We’ve gone out and invested in ways such as hiring a director of professional development. That allows us to create the in-house capacity to provide the kind of infrastructure that people want in order to be able to practise law at their maximum capacity.” Stay tuned for more news on the merger and the resulting shakeout on client conflicts.