Cozen O’Connor continues Canadian expansion with addition of Vancouver-based employment litigator

The US-based law firm, Cozen O’Connor, plans to expand its employment law practice in Canada.

The firm recently announced that Andrea Piercy, the Vancouver employment litigator, is joining the firm to lead the charge.

“Cozen is putting together a team of excellent and motivated lawyers in Canada that I am proud to be part of,” says Piercy. “Cozen has an incredibly impressive labour and employment group in the United States.”

“Joining that group benefits my clients and me because of the breadth and depth of knowledge and available resources. The opportunity to expand the employment law group north of the border as its chair is one I am excited to take on.”

With its Canadian growth, Cozen needs employment lawyers to advise its clients across the country and provide US and other international clients with employment law advice for their Canadian operations, she says.

The employment law group will also complement the capital markets/securities group, highlighting the labour and employment issues arising in corporate transactions, Piercy adds.

Cozen O’Connor first launched in Canada in 2005, opening a Toronto office. The firm added offices in Montreal and Vancouver in 2019 and beefed up those offices in 2021 with the intention of building a full-service corporate law firm in Canada.

In February, Cozen O’Connor hired John Tsiofas to direct Canadian operations. Last March, it welcomed a capital markets and securities group from Miller Thomson. And in 2021, the firm hired four lawyers from Cassels Brock & Blackwell to bolster its work in international litigation and cross-border transactional activities.

Piercy says as her firm builds its Canadian employment law practice, one key issue is efforts by employees to maintain their work-from-home arrangements as companies look to get back to the office post-pandemic.

“In responding, employers must consider legal issues as well as a myriad of practical and business implications,” she says. “It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years.”

Another legal development on Piercy’s radar is the recent Competition Act amendments. These include a prohibition on wage-fixing and no-poach agreements between employers. As the amendments come into force at the end of June, lawyers are working on updating affected clients with the necessary information.

In another employment-law trend, the US is following Canada’s lead on restrictive covenants in employment agreements.

“In Canada, it is well established that a non-competition clause in an employment agreement is challenging to enforce. Now, this is the ‘trend’ in the US, and we are seeing states across the country restricting, and sometimes entirely prohibiting such clauses.”