4. Patterson Palmer
Total Lawyers: 78

Offices: 6

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

Lawyers by Office: Moncton: 11; Fredericton: 6; Saint John: 22; Charlottetown: 10; Summerside: 5; St. John’s: 24

Core Practice Areas:
Insurance; corporate finance; business and corporate commercial; civil litigation; tax; labour and employment; banking; bankruptcy and insolvency; real property; and natural resources and energy.    

Key Clients:
Not available.

Notable Mandates:
Counsel in obtaining financing for a Newfoundland and Labrador pulp and paper mill; court-appointed receiver for one of Atlantic Canada’s largest seafood processors; financing for oil refinery in Newfoundland and Labrador; large fish consortium on legality of provincial scheme for redistribution of crab stocks; advised government on royalty structure for oil and gas industry; and restructuring of pulp and paper mill in New Brunswick.

Star Alumni:
Former federal cabinet ministers John Crosbie and Doug Young are still counsel to the firm; Ed Roberts, lieutenant governor of Newfoundland and Labrador; and Martin Lockyer, general counsel to CHC Helicopter Corporation.

Affiliations:
World Services Group.

The Firm:
Patterson Palmer is the result of the 1995 merger between four major firms in each Atlantic province, and the 2001 merger with Daley Black & Moreira in Halifax. In 2005, the Halifax office left the firm to merge with another Atlantic law firm, McInnes Cooper, and on September 18, 2006, the Truro office began operating as a separate entity. With current representation in major cities in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, Patterson Palmer is one of the region’s outstanding law firms with over 70 lawyers.

Once the merger with Cox Hanson goes through, likely early in 2007, the newly created 173-lawyer Cox & Palmer will take up position as Atlantic Canada’s third most powerful regional firm, with strong offices in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. In the meantime, it’s business as usual for Patterson Palmer, whose client list prior to the Nova Scotia defection included the who’s who of Atlantic Canada, including banks, publicly traded companies, oil and gas companies, professional service firms, hospitals, insurers, resources companies, shipping firms, IT companies and governments. “What do we bring to the party? We’re a very tight-knit, aggressive group of professionals who really care about what we do every day for our clients and we’ve had a rich history and we just think this (merger) is part of our evolution,” says New Brunswick-based chairman Peter Wright. “When you combine that with Cox Hanson, you just have a darn good law firm.”

Lawyers: 40

Offices: 1

Provinces: Nova Scotia

Lawyers by Office: Dartmouth: 40

Core Practice Areas:
Corporate and commercial; personal injury litigation; real estate; health law; employment law; financial recovery; media law; intellectual property; estates and probate; and family law.

Key Clients:
RBC Financial Group; Scotiabank; Duferco Steel Corporation; CBC; Capital District Health Authority; National Bank of Canada; and Doctors Nova Scotia.

Notable Mandates:
Counsel for Sempra Energy on their successful application for natural gas distribution rights in Nova Scotia; National Bank Financial Ltd. in myriad actions resulting from the financial collapse of Knowledge House Inc.; and Credit Union Atlantic Limited on the first public share offering by a credit union in Atlantic Canada.

Star Alumni:
Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Moira Legere; Dereck Jones, retired vice-president and general counsel, Bank of Montreal; James Connors, vice-president regulatory affairs, Emera Inc.; Rosalind Penfound, deputy minister, Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture, and CEO, Fisheries and Aquaculture; and Brian Crocker, retired secretary and general counsel, Dalhousie University.

Affiliations:
TAGLaw.

The Firm:
Launched in 1972 by three newly admitted and entrepreneurial members of the Nova Scotia bar, Boyne Clarke has grown to 40 lawyers by repatriating homesick Maritime-bred lawyers from firms in central and western Canada. Located in picturesque Dartmouth, a 10-minute ferry ride away from Nova Scotia’s business capital of Halifax, Boyne Clarke is well poised to take advantage of a national trend toward shopping around for the best legal fees. “One advantage to us is that national clients can send us work they would normally have done in Toronto,” explains managing partner John Young. “It’s cheaper to have it done here and it’s not related to any particular province or local issue.” Still, the regional bar is facing the challenge of a trend toward greater specialization. “What we try to stay in touch with though and want our clients to know is that a broader understanding of the business details is in fact a valuable asset for lawyers working on transactions,” Young says. “And a tunneled-down expertise in the long run is not necessarily the best kind of expertise.”

Lawyers: 24

Offices: 1

Provinces: Nova Scotia

Lawyers by Office: Halifax: 24

Core Practice Areas:
Banking; corporate; construction; labor and employment; environmental; litigation; energy; commercial and residential real estate; and tax and wealth management.

Key Clients:
Designated counsel for two Canadian chartered banks; represents Canada’s largest private broadcaster; acts for some of the largest commercial real estate owners in Atlantic Canada; one of the largest marine plant aquaculture companies in the world; construction companies; schools and universities; professional liability insurers; an Atlantic Canadian retail pharmacy group; a national funeral services company; and marine terminals.

Notable Mandates:
Counsel in a significant environmental class action; involved in the review of the remediation plan for a very large inactive mining operation; environmental assessments for several large-scale energy projects; multi-million-dollar litigation involving offshore oil rigs; successfully obtained a significant decision on fishing licenses from the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal; acted for a syndicate in a $600-million financing; significant corporate restructurings; and the incorporation of a number of unlimited liability companies and related cross-border transactions.

Star Alumni:
Nova Scotia Appeal Court justices Doane Hallett and Ted Flinn; and Ted Wickwire, who helped develop Nova Scotia’s legal ethics handbook and has an annual law school lecture and the football field at Dalhousie University named in his honour.

Affiliations:
State Capital Global Law Firm Group.

The Firm:
Wickwire Holm operates a fully regional business and commercial practice from a single Halifax office, assisted by the recent loosening of the mobility rules in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. In fact, about 30 per cent of Wickwire Holm’s litigation billings over the past year have been related to matters in New Brunswick or P.E.I., says senior partner Carl Holm. Working on several of the transactions made possible by Nova Scotia’s unique legislation that allows the setting up of tax-efficient unlimited liability companies, the 24-lawyer firm has also been involved in significant related cross-border transactions. Russell MacLellan, a former premier of Nova Scotia, is counsel with this medium-sized, but influential, firm. However, the firm also strongly promotes the exceptional achievements of its associates and junior partners, who include Sean Foreman, the 2003 winner of the Zoe Odei Young Lawyers Award, the 2005 Junior Chamber International Outstanding Young Canadian Award, and past chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s environmental law section. “The initiative of our junior lawyers certainly makes me feel confident about the firm’s long-term future and I think makes a significant contribution to how we are regarded,” says Holm. “Incidentally, we also did pretty well in the legal softball league this summer.”

7. Benson•Myles
Lawyers: 18

Offices: 1

Provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador

Lawyers by Office: St. John’s: 18

Core Practice Areas:
Primarily business law, but personal legal services as well.

Key Clients:
Regional Cable Systems; Persona Inc.; International Royalty Corp.; and a chartered bank.

Notable Mandates:
Lead role as counsel for Regional Cable Systems in its completion of a plan of arrangement, including co-ordination of the legal services of several Toronto and New York-based law firms; represented dissident shareholders in successful court proceedings and related corporate proceedings in respect of Fishery Products International proxy contest and board replacement; Persona Inc. in its indirect acquisition of the controlling share block for the Bahamas public company, Cable Bahamas, and its subsidiaries; Persona Inc. in the acquisition of its shares by a consortium of private equity investors led by Texas based Hicks Muse Tate & Furst and involving TD Capital and CIBC Capital; International Royalty Corp. in connection with the acquisition of a stake in the Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt project and a related IPO and unit offering; Barbados-based purchasers in their acquisition and financing of several telecommunications businesses in Jamaica; Trinidad and Tobago-based borrower (the dominant cable operator and a telecommunications service provider in Trinidad and Tobago) of US$120 million in a refinancing with an international syndicate of lenders; and the Barbados-based borrowers of US$100 million in secured financing.

Star Alumni:
Founding members James Puddester and David Orsborn later became justices of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, trial division.

Affiliations:
Business consulting firm Myles & Company Inc.; Capital Global Law Firm Group.

The Firm:
For an 18-lawyer shop overlooking St. John’s Harbour, Benson•Myles has achieved a significant profile in some of the largest transactions in the region, as well as on the national and international stage. Founded in 1980 by a small group of entrepreneurial lawyers dedicated to professionalism, creativity, a practical business attitude, accessibility, and mobility in working as part of each client’s management and advisory team, with strong problem-solving skills, the firm has been a lead adviser to one of the leading stakeholders in the Hibernia Offshore Oil Project, to the developers of hydro-electric and wind energy projects and programs, and in the development of mining and mineral resources. Firm lawyers have also played very prominent roles in some of the most significant litigation that has occurred in the province over the last two decades and routinely act for some of the largest stakeholders in the most material insolvency and restructuring transactions, mergers and acquisitions, says managing partner Wayne Myles.

Through its affiliation with the consulting firm Myles & Company Inc., the law firm has also played leading and supporting roles in respect of numerous cable television, Internet, sub-marine fiber optic cable, and telecommunications acquisitions and development projects outside of Canada. Benson•Myles received the 2005 St. John’s Board of Trade Business Excellence Award for “contribution to community & community service.”
Myles says the consolidation among the big regional firms has already generated some conflict work, with much more expected. As well, the firm enjoys referrals from other Atlantic Canada law firms, he says. “We still have people tell us they are referring work to us because they can’t refer work to a Stewart McKelvey or a McInnes Cooper because they perceive them to be their direct competitor in their own marketplace,” he says.