Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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LAW DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT Global reach International legal alliances help companies overcome the pitfalls of cross-border litigation. By Andi Balla It is a scenario many Canadian in-house lawyers know well. They show up for work to find out their com- pany has been involved in a lawsuit in California, Puerto Rico, or Virginia, and they need to find a local lawyer imme- diately to tend to the case. Recently, it happened to Open Joist 2000 Inc., a Trois-Rivières, Que.-based manufac- turer. It had been named in a dispute in California and needed legal counsel there immediately. The company did not go looking in California, however, it called up its firm in Montreal. In a short time frame, the Canadian company had a California law firm that "was able to jump right into it, worked with the case, got an understanding, and participated in the mediation session," says Bruno Floriani, co-managing part- ner at Montreal's Lapointe Rosenstein Marchand Melançon LLP, who repre- sents Open Joist 2000 in Canada. A settlement was eventually reached that was to the satisfaction of the company, he adds. The Quebec-California case is not unique. This sort of connection hap- pens every day among Canadian and U.S. jurisdictions. Indeed, they hap- pen around the world. That's because lawyers like Floriani use their firms' membership in international legal alli- ances to find previously vetted law firms to refer their clients when they need help in other jurisdictions around the world. Floriani's firm is a member of TerraLex Inc., one of several interna- tional alliances that operate under fairly similar methods and rules. Independent law firms can join an alliance after being vetted for quality and agreeing to the rules the alliance sets. Sometimes the agreement is exclusive, for example only one firm for each alliance can be in Ontario or British Columbia. But that is not always the case. "The main reason we exist is to help our member firms serve their clients better, so part of it is to be able to work with quality firms, where each firm is able to reach out to quality law firms in other areas," says Carl E. Anduri, who as president of Lex Mundi, another large internation- al alliance of independent law firms, knows that finding a reliable law firm in other jurisdictions is vital to many businesses. And law firms take membership in the alliances very seriously, says Ken Kallish, a partner at Toronto's Minden Gross LLP and former chairman of INHOUSE DECEMBER 2010/JANUARY 2011 • 31