The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50808
SLEEPY HOLLOW NO MORE Quebec City lawyers riding high on homegrown economic boom BY MARK CARDWELL W hen Pierre Cimon started practising law in his hometown of Quebec City 40 years ago, the pic- turesque provincial capital was dismissed by many as a sleepy bureaucratic backwater that relied on tourism and government to provide jobs. The city's small, tightly-knit legal community, too, was seen as decidedly down-home. "There were few national or international organizations here [and] there were no national law fi rms present — just a half-dozen large local fi rms that dominated the scene," recalls Cimon, an eminent local litigator who is co-pres- ident of the Canadian Bar Association's Canadian Legal Conference and Expo here from Aug. 17 to 19. "But things have changed dramatically since then." Mon dieu, oui! Long an international A-list des- tination for savvy travellers, Quebec is also now one of Canada's hottest cities in terms of economic growth. Buoyed by a red-hot real estate market and booming banking, insurance, and high-tech sectors like computer animation and biomedical research, it has led the nation in several major economic and social indicators for much of this decade. And the long-range economic outlook is as beautiful as the view from the city's historic ramparts. To be sure, the local legal community has been transformed in lockstep with an economic renais- sance that, in many ways, its members have aided and abetted. Most of Canada's best-known national fi rms — Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Heenan Blaikie LLP, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, and Ogilvy Re- nault LLP — are present here now, as are the prov- ince's main ones — Stein Monast, LLP, Cain Lama- rre Casgrain Wells, Joli-Coeur Lacasse Geoffrion Jetté St-Pierre, Langlois Kronström Desjardins, BCF, and Lavery de Billy. Most arrived via merger with local fi rms, a trend that began in the early 1990s and picked up steam as the region's new economy started to surge and the Parti Québécois returned to power. "The globalization of the economy was forcing everyone to be part of a wider network," says Cimon, who left one of Quebec City's leading fi rms (Letourneau Stein, where he was managing partner) to open the Ogilvy Renault offi ce in 1991 — just a few months after Faskens became the fi rst national fi rm to hang a shingle in the provincial capital. "And to me it is quite obvious that the prospect of having a presence in an independent province was part of the strategy [of national fi rms]." While the threat of separation has since waned, but still lingers, Quebec City's economic develop- ment has been sensational. Mired 15 years ago in a deep slump that was mostly due to recession and www. Law ye rmag.com A UGUST 2008 47