Auvinen says his firm has changed dramatically since its last rebrand, and so has legal marketing
Canadian Lawyer recently spoke with Peter Auvinen, chair of Miller Thomson, about his firm’s recent rebrand, hybrid work arrangements and the growth of insolvency and restructuring.
Tell me about your practice.
I started as a general commercial litigation lawyer. When the economy was in a downturn, I began doing a lot of financial services litigation which drew me into the restructuring and insolvency field, which set the tone for my practice. Over the last 30 years, I've been doing commercial litigation and insolvency work.
I haven’t practiced actively much since 2019, when I became the firm’s chair. This is a full-time position.
Tell me how you ended up in a leadership role at Miller Thomson.
In my mid-40s, I sat on several committees at the firm. And that led to me becoming a national executive committee member around 2013. Due to this experience, I became the Toronto office managing partner in 2015, a wonderful experience that led to me becoming the chair in 2019.
Your firm recently announced a brand refresh – why now?
The last time we did a rebranding was seven years ago, a lifetime ago. The firm has changed dramatically since, focussing on becoming one of Canada's leading business law firms. We've beefed up our corporate M&A and securities groups and improved the quality of our work and clients over that period.
As we have emerged out of the pandemic, marketing on social media is far more critical. Our previous logo, including the colours and things of that nature, didn't stand out. So we rebranded now to stand out from the crowd. The experts tell me the new colour scheme is more decisive and better reflects the firm's culture and energy.
Lawyers usually communicate better with words. Were some lawyers skeptical about the importance of rebranding?
I can only rely on the experts; they all tell me that social media marketing is far more critical today than 10 or even five years ago. They also told us our colour scheme and logos needed to be crisp and refreshed.
Brand, marketing, and work quality all go together; they complement each other. There are partners in our firm who are skeptical about these things, as lawyers are typically skeptical about many things. But the quality of our work and the branding efforts of our business development and marketing teams are complementary.
What are your most noteworthy internal initiatives or strategic moves?
In November 2021, we implemented a formal remote working policy. Forty-two percent of our staff now work in a formally approved, hybrid working arrangement. Many law firms talk about caring for their people and doing things to support their mental health, and I'm proud that we have done this because it has improved the quality of the working life of our employees. It's walking the walk regarding mental health in the legal profession.
When we've renewed our leases across the country, this has allowed us to reduce our space in most locations by between 15 and 20 percent, despite our plans to grow the firm. This impacts our cost structure in a very positive way.
We also continue to promote entrepreneurialism within the firm; it is a cornerstone of our firm culture. Our lawyers possess an entrepreneurial spirit. Many of our clients are owner-managers and entrepreneurs, and our lawyers understand them. Clients are looking for efficiency, results, and good communication.
You are the only national firm that has a presence in the prairies. Has hybrid work allowed you to recruit in other parts of the country?
Yes, we have at least one person working in Halifax full-time remotely. Other people live far from the Toronto office but are attached to this office’s operations. The key word is flexibility. That has allowed us to compete for talent in places where we're not necessarily physically located.
What major trends are you seeing in your client work?
The demand for efficiency. Over the last couple of years, there have been economic headwinds where in-house departments are becoming very cost conscious. They don't want files overstaffed. They want partners to participate in the work actively and we’ve always run it relatively lean and mean.
Another trend is the use of generative AI in servicing our clients. We've had clients produce legal documents using generative AI, and they have asked us to comment on them. AI is going to have an impact on the legal profession and client relationships.
Tell me about a recent challenging client matter.
We are acting for a client in another part of the world, and they have brought a critical application for an injunction in Canada. As professionals, we want to serve the clients at a high professional level, and the clients are very sophisticated but aren’t fully aware of the Canadian landscape. They have a definite idea of how they want to run the litigation in Canada, which in certain instances is not in their best interests.
So, over the last six months, we've been busy threading the needle to satisfy the client's file management expectations and get them an excellent result.
What are your recent areas of growth?
Our ESG group has been on the cutting edge of thought leadership. We are starting to see several interesting mandates, whether they be environmental, social, or on the governance side. This is not new, but data protection, privacy, cybersecurity and renewable energy are also growth areas.
Our insolvency and restructuring group has exploded, we are now up to 25 lawyers in that group, and they've been extremely busy. Unfortunately for clients, I expect that that will be a busy practice area over the next few years.
What is causing this growth?
We are seeing insolvency and restructuring growth in the real estate sector, which is affected by rising interest rates, and in the cannabis industry, which is going through a substantial reorganization.
What are your recent areas of challenge?
Capital markets and securities have been slower over the last few years, but there's still some activity. 2021 was the high watermark. Now, our corporate lawyers tell me that deals will start and then not be completed for various reasons.
What trends do you anticipate in the next 12 months?
We're going to continue to operate in a challenging environment. Inflation is still running higher than governments would like to see, and I anticipate additional interest rate rises to combat that.
Inflation, and recent reports of a slowdown in the Chinese economy, have a slowing effect on clients. We still have the Ukrainian war, so there's a fair degree of uncertainty.
I do recall the last time we saw a downturn, though; it was a period of very significant growth in our firm. Despite the challenging environment, I expect to actively recruit and build bench strength in our key practice areas.
Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
