Canadian Lawyer

38 A P R I L 2 0 1 9 w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m tal and Indigenous activists to build pipelines that would finally get Alberta crude access to new markets besides the United States. It won't be easy. In May 2018, the Trudeau government announced it would buy Kinder Morgan's divisive Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project for $4.5 billion. It could potentially triple the flow of crude from Alberta's oilsands to new markets. But just four months later, the Federal Court of Appeal stopped the project in its tracks. It ruled that the National Energy Board had failed to properly consider the concerns of First Nations over how increased tanker ship traffic would threaten B.C.'s coastlines and their communities. In the view of Colin Feasby, managing partner of Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP's Calgary office, Alberta's economic climate the past four years has made things "both hot and cold" for lawyers, depending on their practice areas. "The big change in the market in Calgary is historically there were lots of junior oil and gas companies, many of them public. And later on, there were income trusts. That generated a lot of junior corporate finance activity," he says. Ben Rogers, office managing partner at Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP in Calgary, has seen an uptick in acquisition and divestiture activity the past year. For example, last December, Athabasca Oil sold some of its pipelines and a storage terminal to Enbridge Inc. for $265 million. Rogers says there's also been an increase in "monetization transactions" in which oil and gas companies sell off pieces of their infrastructure in exchange for long-term rights via leasebacks or royalty streams to continue using those facilities. "I and others believe the worst is behind us," says Bennett Jones's Maguire. "There are more people finding jobs than losing jobs." The Calgary and Alberta economy will grow, if slowly, he predicts. Maguire, who says Calgary's employment rate is slowly recov- ering, has, like Fasken's Maxwell, also witnessed what he terms a "repurposing" of Calgary's business talent. "Calgary is still full of smart, entrepreneurial business and technical people who won't sit still." From the gloom has emerged a wave of startups in agribusi- ness, technologies including blockchain and crypto-currency, and, notably, cannabis. And they all need lawyers in a variety of prac- tices such as taxes, contracting, intellectual property, regulatory work and financings. However, cautions Maguire, until the prices improve for Canadian crude and gas and the price differential nar- rows between Alberta oil and the international price, "we will still see stagnated capital investment." At least one other area of legal work is now thriving at city law firms. "Our litigators, like many of our colleagues in the market- place, tend to be chugging along very nicely," notes Alan Ross, managing partner of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP's Calgary office. "Our construction litigation team was especially busy on a number of major matters." The construction industry, it seems, is prone to contractual disputes. During the prosperous years preceding 2014, Calgary's skyline bristled with cranes during an office building boom. 15,758 – Number of lawyers holding membership in the Law Society of Alberta 10,087 – Number of lawyers holding an active status 5,152 – Number of active lawyers in Calgary 42 – Percentage of active lawyers in Calgary who are women 29 – Percentage of active lawyers in Calgary who work in-house for business or government 3,351 – Number of lawyers in Calgary who work in private firms 10 – Percentage of lawyers who are sole practitioners in Calgary 16 – Percentage of lawyers who work in firms of two to 10 lawyers in Calgary 8 – Percentage of lawyers who work in firms of 11 to 25 lawyers in Calgary 29 – Percentage of lawyers who work in firms of more than 26 lawyers in Calgary By the numbers "Despite some of these challenges in the industry, it was a reasonably strong year because a lot of those headwinds actually create legal work." Colin Feasby, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP Source: The Law Society of Alberta

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