City Report: Montreal's legal economy continues to thrive

Jauvin suggests boutique and mid-size firms “have to focus on our areas of strength and what we want to develop; recognize our forte.”

While he doesn’t necessarily see Montreal as a growing market, Jauvin says it is healthy and the smaller firms are still making money.

“Income isn’t a problem at this point, but the question is,  what about five years down the road?” he wonders.

One major firm continuing to expand under the current conditions is Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, born of the 2000 merger with Montreal’s Martineau Walker, Fasken Campbell Godfrey of Toronto, and Russell & DuMoulin of Vancouver.

“We’ve doubled [in size] in Quebec the past 10 years,” notes Fasken Martineau managing partner Claude Auger. “We can make massive investments smaller firms can’t afford.”

Faskens, celebrating its centennial in 2007, extended its reach further earlier this year by first merging in February with London, England-based commercial firm Stringer Saul LLP to create the biggest Canadian legal office in Britain. Then in mid-March it joined with Ottawa communications law firm Johnston & Buchan LLP.
Quebec’s emerging technological development scene saw intellectual property specialist Bereskin & Parr follow Blake Cassels and Osler Hoskin to open an office in Montreal two years ago.

“It just came up as a matter of casual conversation at IP meetings in mid-2004,” managing partner Lloyd Sarginson recalled in a phone interview from the firm’s Toronto headquarters. “We began to think about getting more of the Quebec IP market and started more dialogue and it grew from there.”

He says it was decided a presence was needed in Quebec “because there was a lot of our kind of work there, but we couldn’t service it from Toronto. Montreal was the place for us to be to do it and we needed folks preferably from Quebec who had worked in that environment and had a following.”

One such person was patent agent France Côté, whom Bereskin & Parr raided from a Montreal-based national law firm to head the new office.

In a short time, Côté says the IP boutique firm became “one of the key players in Montreal.”

The office, which began with two professional staff members then doubled in size within less than six months and now employs more than a dozen people, is scheduled to move into new space twice the size next month because it has already outgrown the current premises.
 
André Vautour, managing partner at Desjardins Ducharme LLP, concedes his 140-strong office is one of the shrinking number of mid-size firms remaining in business, but he doesn’t have a problem with that.
“Our position is regional, Montreal and Quebec City, with no strategic objective to be national or to have a presence in Toronto,” he says.

Vautour explains it isn’t necessary to set up shop outside the province in order to get work from the rest of Canada and that being independent is in Desjardins Ducharme’s favour in that regard.

“Since there are fewer independent firms here, we get lots of Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver business [from firms in those cities] who don’t want to give work to their competitors,” he notes.