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CENTRAL MONTREAL TO WELCOME CITY BAR GROUPS FROM AROUND THE WORLD ember, Montreal is the place where presidents and representatives of the bars from 18 big cities around the world will meet for the 7th World City Bar Leaders Conference. Sitting alongside the Barreau de F Montréal and the Toronto Lawyers Association will be representatives from cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Barcelona, Moscow, Shanghai, Seoul, and Ho Chi Minh City. The conference is a relatively new forum — the first was held in New York in 2001 — for the leaders of big-city bar associations to share experiences with current business trends, issues affecting the legal profession, or the court system in urban agglomerations. At last year's conference in Tokyo, Japanese lawyers were fascinated to hear how bars from other corners of the world organized pro bono efforts, says Nicolas Plourde, the Heenan Blaikie LLP busi- ness lawyer and former bâtonnier of the Barreau de Montréal who is president of the organizing committee and chairman of the 2011 conference. Leaders from the Barreau de Paris outlined their initiatives including how they regularly send a bus staffed with lawyers onto city streets to help serve homeless people who typically would not seek out assistance on their own. Plourde says the international mobility of lawyers and how the profession is regu- lated are other points of exchange. Stephen Schenke, another former Montreal bâtonnier, says he was struck by how the practice of law is changing for high-level commercial transactions after hearing presentations by the City of London Law Society during the bar leaders conference there in 2008. "There is a level of law that is being practised that irst there was New York, Paris, and Shanghai, then Chicago, London, and Tokyo. In Sept- requires young lawyers to be able to speak more than one language, to be familiar with more than one legal system and to be ultra up to date in the use of tech- nology in their practice," says Schenke. "Law schools in the major cities would have to cater to those expectations in the market." The increased interaction of civil law and common law in jurisdictions around the world is on the agenda in Montreal. "This is a topic which is interesting to discuss in Quebec because we are a bi- juridical [civil in the province and com- mon law in the rest of the country], or trans-systemic system," says Plourde. "More and more you have international transactions between countries of various systems. So you have, for example, lawyers from London, Montreal, Paris, and New York negotiating together. They all have insuRance law fiRm hooks up with u.k.'s clyde & co. network, the merger is the first after the groundbreaking marriage of Ogilvy Renault LLP, which officially joined the Norton Rose Group on June 1. Specializing primarily in insurance law, the Canadian firm's team of 40 professionals, including C 15 partners, will join Clyde's global network that includes 24 offices and 1,400 employees world- wide. This is Clyde's first foray into Canada, though it has three American offices in New York, New Jersey, and San Francisco. It is set to grow even larger as in July, merger talks between Clydes and 300-lawyer U.K. firm Barlow Lyde & Gilbert LLP came to a head with both firms ready to vote on the deal by the end of the month. Jo-Anne Demers, NPM's chairwoman, told Law Times their deal, which was sealed by unani- mous partner votes at both firms, has been in the works for almost two years. "It was slow dat- ing," she says. "We weren't looking to get married too fast." Both firms shared clients, including Lloyd's of London, and were introduced by Conservative Sen. David Angus, a former partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP. "We started discussions and we real- ized that we shared the same philosophy and the same approach to business," said Demers. "After that, we decided to negotiate more seriously and came up with this wonderful news." James Burns, a Clyde & Co. partner and board member, says Canada is an extremely attrac- tive market globally due to the strength of its economy. "The Canadian insurance market is going from strength to strength and the U.K. insurance market is building up its presence in Canada," he adds. "NPM, as a top-rated Canadian insurance law firm with existing work for Lloyd's of London syndicates, is a natural fit with Clyde & Co." There had been a trend of firms merging within Canada for years, but when Ogilvy Renault became Norton Rose OR LLP, it was the first international merger of its kind in Canada. As Nicholl Paskell-Mede also goes down the international merger route, it could be a sign of more of these deals to come. — ANDI BALLA & MICHAEL MCKIERNAN www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com A U GUST 2011 9 anadian law firm Nicholl Paskell-Mede LLP will merge with U.K.-based international firm Clyde & Co. on Sept. 1, the two firms announced in late June. Though smaller in terms of the number of Canadian lawyers joining an international C ontinued on pa g e 11