How did you get into firm management?

Tragically! My predecessor got terminal cancer. There was a meeting of our executive at the time. They said: ‘look we need a temporary solution. He has decided to step down, and dedicate . . . the last year of his life . . . to his health.’

The firm in Toronto was big enough to adopt a temporary structure where Norm Bacal [also national co-managing partner of Heenan Blaikie] and myself would share the responsibility [of managing the firm]. And it was temporary. It happened in July ’97 and they said at our partners meeting, ‘in September, we will review first of all, the choice of you guys, and we will review the structure, is it going to be two managing partners.’

In September they met and said, ‘it’s going fine. The structure is permanent and so are you guys.’ Simple as that. It was not a planned thing but it came in that context. For sure it has evolved. Now, whoever will replace me, or Norm in Toronto, will have their mandates restricted to two mandates of five years. When we made those rules, I was grandfathered. But I was reappointed by the partners in January [2008] for another term. So stretched to the limit, I could hold this position for 16 years, which is a lot! So I could be there until Dec. 31, 2013.

What do you feel are the greatest challenges in your position?

The greatest challenge. It’s a people business so the biggest challenge, and we always try to focus on that, is to make it a livable environment for our lawyers. It is a value for us to create an environment where people will feel happy to come to work. As you know, we took a lot of pride of being selected in 2007 as one of the 50 Best Places to Work in Canada by Canadian Business magazine. That reward comes with value and they are not spontaneous values. They have to be durable: have been there for a long time and sustained always. So it’s a challenge to create that environment because what it underlies is that resources are quite scarce and to retain our people with the new trends going on is more and more of a challenge.

The new generation [doesn’t] necessarily in law firms [take] the path the older people have taken. It’s not to say they are deprived of passion, it’s not that at all, but we have to set the perfect framework to make that passion blossom. We need to accommodate. In my days, the ratio of women and men in my profession was not even 1:10. Now those dynamics have completely shifted. [W]e have to deal with and try to accommodate the work-life balance. We’re addressing it.

It’s purely a matter of attitude and how you deal with the issue. If you come at it with a bias and you see it as an onus or if you see it as an embarrassment that you have to deal with, that’s the key for failure. But if you come at with it that people are valuable and they have these concerns, you can find solutions . . . which we do. There’s also the other side of it: the clients. How do you serve them? The RFPs . . . as soon as a client comes to the conclusion that the services they’re requiring from an outside consultant reach a certain amount of money in a year, I’ll say $500,000, and it is recurrent, he is going to bring it into the commodity chapter and he is going to say ‘what price could I have for this sizeable amount that I’m throwing to the consultant and that is recurring? So give me a price.’

It has become a climate of competition. Clients are smart. They come with very sophisticated RFPs and they ask a law firm to play against each other. We were not used to that 20 years ago. I remember the first that went that were the accountants and they survived and we will too.

What are the greatest rewards?

The biggest reward could be the money we make, but money is so funny a value. It’s the people that feel at home, that feel it’s a great environment, that are happy to work here, and that we have a name that attracts people and makes them want to come and work here . . . You know a great place, a great name, a good reputation, a good corporate citizen. . . . It’s a great reward to see that.

There’s always tensions, we’re lawyers after all. But there’s always a way through, a solution. . . . They’re very bright, they’re very smart but sometimes they come with big egos. It’s the nature of the beast. I won’t fight that. But they’re great people. Lawyers are very motivating.

What would you say are your firm’s strongest areas of practice, what are you best known for?

I would say that we have a balance of service. We’re very well known in labour and employment across the country. We have, I think, 110 lawyers strictly that practise labour and employment, Charter, pay equity, pension funds, and so on.

We have a large litigation group that counts for about another third of the firm, and we have a commercial/securities/tax/M&A practice, what we call corporate financing. Sure, living what we’re living now, we’re not as severely hit as other firms may be if their business model is strictly transactional.

I can tell you the labour and employment sector is very busy, our litigation sector is very busy, and our corporate sector feels the pinch as anyone who’s working in that sector. But because we are [a] mid-cap and low-cap business and many of [our clients] are in the private sector, we don’t feel it as much.

What do you think makes Heenan Blaikie one of the best places to work?

I think we have values of collegiality, we have values of entrepreneurship, we value always that making sure that wherever it comes from — it could be a young associate, a young partner, an older partner, a non-equity partner — it’s never top down.

If you have a good idea and it makes sense, we will develop it, we will push for it. So really what makes us partners is that creativity is always valued. People say because you don’t put money as the first value that that means that you’re not in the game. That’s not true. People live well here, make a good living.

Our prime value is not to be the law firm that pays the most in the country. Some may have that value, it is not us. And if you have a value like that, you will agree with me that it comes with some sets of problems. But we have other values, people will feel more appreciated, more accepted for what they are: lawyers with good talent, good values. That if ever they have an idea they can put it forward and it won’t just be pushed away because it didn’t come from a committee or people with grey hair or from the chairman or one of the managing partners. They feel that they’re part of the deal.