Photo: Just a Prairie Boy

It’s not easy being a full-service regional firm in Saskatchewan and Manitoba these days. When not turning clients away because you’re just too busy, you’ve got to field calls from national firms looking to link up and establish a presence in some of Canada’s most lively economic zones. And the firms featured in Canadian Lawyer’s list of top 10 Prairie law firms are sure to be on the top of anyone’s list of targets, whether for legal services or a law firm merger. So you can just imagine how swamped they are.

Economic growth and development have led to an optimistic outlook among Atlantic Canada’s top 10 full-service law firms. Increased investment and development in the region mean more opportunities for all firms on this year’s list — large and small, say managing partners. The firms made this year’s list through Canadian Lawyer’s annual survey based on the votes of lawyers across Canada. To qualify, these firms needed to offer a wide range of legal services and have offices only in Atlantic Canada — New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

In the spring, General Motors of Canada Ltd. unveiled plans to invest $480 million for the next few years in its St. Catharines, Ont., production facility. It was a move that may have seemed improbable just a short time ago. After all, the company had teetered on the brink of a Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act filing a year earlier, while its U.S. parent was forced to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If not for political will — and the hard work of massive teams of lawyers in an unprecedented restructuring process — those plans might not have gone ahead. But they did, securing an estimated 800 jobs.

Rob Donald was in private practice as a corporate litigator and partner in a Montreal law firm when he was hired by a British company in 1992 to help it retrieve a big Boeing jet it had leased to a Canadian firm in a deal gone south. “It was the first time I’d ever dealt with aviation law,” he recalls. “But the complexity of the case was extraordinary — trying to seize an aircraft that was flying around the world. It really hooked me.”

Typing the word Molson into a Facebook search reveals more than just the official page of the Canadian brewing giant.

In 2001, many provincial governments changed their incorporation laws to include professionals. Since then, lawyers have been eligible to incorporate their legal practices in Ontario.

 

Hhgregg Appliances Inc. recently signed a lease to take over a massive building to house its new central distribution centre in Brandywine, Md. The news might not be all that surprising for the specialty electronics outfit that has opened nine new stores in the past two months, despite all the economic soothsayers warning of slower consumer spending from now until forever. What is interesting is the 393,440-square-foot building once housed a Circuit City distribution centre. 

 

The telecommunications industry in Canada is big business. And for wireless and wireline companies, it is exclusively Canadian.

 

It may have been Sigmund Freud who described us as little more than the grown adults of the children we once were. 

With oil prices continuing to hover near record levels and all-important exploration costs running into the billions of dollars in the ultra-competitive global industry, it should come as no surprise that in-house counsel in the oil and gas sector are pumped about the work they’re doing.