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www.canadianlawyermag.com 35 Get compensation misaligned with strategy, he argues, and compensation becomes the real strategic plan by default. The firm rebuilt its approach roughly six years ago, bringing in a third party to inter- view more than half its partners on what worked and what didn't, a process it now repeats every year. For those changes to hold, he says the input has to come from the bottom up and stay organic to the firm. The AI training conundrum Saunders is candid about what worries him most in developing junior lawyers: keeping them in the loop validating and confirming AI-generated work, rather than letting the technology quietly take over the tedious groundwork he credits as foundational to his own legal judgment. His concern is straightforward: junior lawyers who lean on AI too heavily lose the reps that build real judgment, the kind no one develops without eventually writing the memo themselves. His answer leans on old-fashioned mentorship paired with a new mindset. "I like to channel Wayne Gretzky on this one and try to skate to where the puck is going to be," he says, describing an approach that identifies the skills future lawyers will need, pairs junior lawyers directly with senior mentors inside real workflows, and uses AI itself as a teaching tool to close gaps it also creates. A book, a business, and a shared name Saunders is finalizing the manuscript for his book, now retitled The Fortified Firm: How Organizations Can Thrive in the AI Era, expected in late October or early November 2026, drawing on more than a decade of lessons from Stewart McKelvey. The title now matches the name of a new advisory business the firm is simultaneously launching, also called The Fortified Firm, which will help other law firms work through the same strategic, compensation, and AI adoption challenges Saunders has spent years solving internally. Asked what capability he'd tell another firm's leadership to build first, he resists a single answer, arguing it depends too much on the firm's own starting point for a one- size-fits-all prescription. Still, one capability anchors the rest: a strategic plan with clearly identified trade-offs, since good strategy is defined more by what a firm chooses not to do than by what it chooses to do. Q&A with Paul Saunders Stewart McKelvey, Halifax, NS Q: Stewart McKelvey became the first large Canadian law firm to publicly announce a firm-wide rollout of Legora. Walk me through what convinced the Partnership Board to move from a 58-person pilot to a firm-wide rollout across all six offices. A: I've been in this role for 11 years, and we'd been making the case that whole time about being adaptable to change and embracing innovation. When we made the pitch late last year, we leaned on that decade of work. AI is a transformative general technology that's going to permeate every industry, and legal is probably one of the most disrupted. That's also a huge opportunity if you're willing to be at the forefront of it, incorpo- rating it into workflows, aligning pricing and processes, developing champions to make it stick. The case wasn't difficult to make because it wasn't the first time partners had heard it, the technology was different, but the mindset had already been embedded into the firm's DNA over the last decade. Q: You've said compensation alignment is unglamorous work. What resistance did you run into trying to tie partner compensation directly to the firm's strategic priorities? A: Change is hard, especially around something as sensitive as compensation. There's a quote I love: "If your compensa- tion system isn't aligned with your strategic plan, your compensation system is your strategic plan." We undertook that project about six years ago, and we run a continuous improvement process on it every year. Before implementing the new system, we brought in a third party who interviewed more than half our part- ners on what worked and what didn't. We do extensive consultations, interviews after every compensation cycle, so changes reflect the will of our partners rather than being dictated from the top. It has to be organic in a law firm environment for it to stick. Q: You've written that developing junior lawyers to be resilient in the face of AI advance- ments is a real concern for you. What worries you most about how associates are learning the profession right now? A: It's absolutely necessary that the next generation learns to use AI, that's the reality of modern practice, but lawyers need to stay in the loop validating and confirming the accuracy of that work. I learned the hard way early in my career reviewing hundreds of leases during due diligence, hours of unglamorous work that turned out to be genuinely valuable. If people "It's funny that the very technology that's so disruptive is a part of the solution to address that disruption as well" Paul Saunders, Stewart McKelvey