Canadian Lawyer

"If you're getting conflicted out or losing your referral base because of an international merger, you're going to start getting worried. It's all part of the equation." Carrie Heller, The Heller Group verbal it's been a loss — but they will look to build," says Berger. It's natural in a situation like a merger that existing partners will take stock of whether they see their current existence as something that is sustainable under the new, more global regime. "People want a sense of security, and that their practice can continue to flourish at the firm," says Carrie Heller, president of legal at executive search firm The Heller Group. "If you're getting conflicted out or losing your referral base because of an international merger, you're going to start getting worried. It's all part of the equation." Of those who went to Bennett Jones from FMC, two are senior counsel — John Sabine and Frank Davis — six are partners and all have a primary focus in the mining sector with a secondary focus on capital markets and M&A. They include Michael Melanson, Sander Grieve, Abbas Ali Khan, Linda Misetich Dann, James Clare, and Ali Naushahi. There were also five associates who made the move: Justin Park, Jamie Au, Tiffany Canzano, Lisa Telebar, and Elianeth Alicea. This marks the second tour of duty for Melanson and Sabine at Bennett Jones. The firm's Toronto managing partner Stephen Bowman says from a strategic point of view, "it was a natural for us to be interested in the opportunity to expand our mining practice significantly in one go." Of his move, Sabine told Canadian Lawyer columnist Jim Middlemiss while FMC "didn't want to be left in the dust" in the global consolidation of law firms, the 28 M ay 2013 www.CANADIAN TSX is a mining capital. "We can operate worldwide as we do without having a global brand in the sense of a branch in every country. What we do is worldwide. We don't think we need a global brand to do it." A big turnoff to remaining with Dentons was the expectation that in an international firm, the lawyers will route work to the other offices "as opposed to someone you worked with for a decade. It was a big issue for us." For its part, Dentons, which declined to give an interview for this story, said in a statement the moves were not unexpected. "It is not unusual at this time of year for partners and practices to change firms.  The possibility of these types of changes was taken into consideration as a part of our rigorous strategic planning process as FMC, Salans, and SNR Denton considered its combination,"  said Chris Pinnington, now Canada chief executive officer at Dentons. He went on to say the departures from the Toronto office would have no impact on their ability to provide legal counsel to clients. Bowman says the days of lawyers staying in one firm forever ended in the early '90s. "I think movement will be a continuing part of the profession as we face more changes in technology and in the kinds of ways people get legal services and the continuing evolution of the balance between in-house and external counsel." It's an "inevitable outcome," he adds, that law firms will look different and they'll move to position themselves differently. "It is a consequence of that that people move." L a w ye r m a g . c o m The growth of Bennett Jones in Toronto has been largely through the lateral movement of senior people from other firms in the Toronto area. Bowman concedes the departure of the 13 lawyers from FMC was by far the largest single group of lawyers to join Bennett Jones at one time from another firm. He says integrating the group into the Bennett Jones culture won't be a problem. "They have quite a co-ordinated practice in many respects. But for us the process of integrating new lawyers into the firm is something we're pretty experienced at and something we work hard at getting right." While it may be common for lawyers to move around, departures so soon after a merger is announced suggest others may be unhappy too. "That gets attention and suggests there are more than a few partners in that firm that were against that merger," says lawyer Mitchell Kowalski, author of Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century. For many involved, it may also come down to the bottom line. The lawyers who left FMC all reportedly had good relationships with U.S. counsel and received considerable referral work from the U.S., which would have been jeopardized by the Dentons merger. "You would think with an international firm where mining is done around the world they would have seen the benefits [to stay], but clearly they didn't," says Kowalski. "Does it send a message to the rest of the firm? I think there are probably other people at FMC who are thinking, 'Maybe we should be looking elsewhere as well.'"

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