Stuart Wood, who helped scale Caravel Law LLP, joins IPH Limited in September
When Stuart Wood joins IPH Limited as its first Canadian regional chief executive officer on September 3rd, it will be mere weeks before the intellectual property services group begins onboarding its latest acquisition, Bereskin & Parr.
The firm is set to merge with Smart & Biggar – another Canadian IP powerhouse that was IPH’s first acquisition outside the Asia-Pacific region – to form a single firm at the end of September.
Wood’s arrival at IPH, just as the group makes yet another addition to its portfolio, is not coincidental. The group is experiencing tremendous growth: Bereskin & Parr is the company’s fourth Canadian acquisition since 2022.
A significant part of Wood’s new role, he says, will be acting as “the connective tissue between IPH, the global organization and network, and the Canadian firms.” This will involve centralizing functions across IPH’s growing Canadian portfolio while leveraging the firms’ new alliance to strengthen and enhance their IP services: no small task at a company like IPH, which has “gone from zero to a market-leading position in Canada within two years,” Wood says.
But, Wood adds, he’s ready for the job.
“It’s a really exciting time to be joining as this Canadian hub gets established and all sorts of processes get ingrained and rolled out across the firm,” he says. “It’s a real opportunity to have an impact.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Wood has helped steer a growing company. From 2018 to this summer, Wood was CEO at Caravel Law LLP, where he spent most of his tenure scaling the firm from 35 lawyers to more than 100 and expanding its operations with an office in BC. The Globe and Mail ranked the firm among its top growing companies in 2023 and 2022, and Wood expects it to earn the same accolade for 2024.
Wood has held executive roles at two other law firms, serving as CEO at AUM Law and as chief marketing officer at Torys LLP, based in Toronto. Wood joined the latter several years after it merged with a New York-based firm; he says his job involved helping the two firms “work a little bit better together and on a cross-border nature.”
He thinks this experience will help him guide Bereskin & Parr and Smart & Biggar to a smooth integration.
“I've been a part of first-class professional services organizations, both in consulting and on the law firm side of things, and I've also had an opportunity to be part of a couple of innovative, newer law firms that were emerging and growing and scaling,” Wood says. He says that much of his enthusiasm about his new role is that “IPH really offers the best of both worlds.”
Wood sees joining IPH as a great opportunity for IP firms to be part of a global network – a scenario that could benefit both the firms themselves and their clients. “IP tends to be a global concern for companies,” he says. As part of an international group, Canadian firms can meet clients that operate in other jurisdictions but also have legal needs in Canada, access capital and resources, and give their employees access to an expanded range of career opportunities.
Wood says it speaks volumes that Smart & Biggar and ROBIC, which IPH acquired in November, joined the international group. Each firm “has over 130 years of history and really strong cultures. They're very strong firms with first-class professionals across the board, but they're also still innovating,” he says.
“The fact that the firms are looking at the IPH opportunity as a network that they want to be part of is an indication of the way that they're thinking about the industry, and how to best serve their clients, and how to create the best career opportunities for their profession.”
He adds, “I really think it's a very exciting time for me to be joining.”
