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REGIONAL WRAP-UP Recession? What recession? aise currently tightening its grip on the rest of the country. In fact, they predict business might even pick up. The two Prairie provinces are wide- L ly projected to produce the best eco- nomic growth in the country this year and that's expected to translate into continued strong demand for legal work. Bruce King, manag- Bruce King ing partner of Win- nipeg-based Pitblado LLP, says the diversity of the Manitoba econ- omy, which includes significant contri- butions from the aerospace, financial services, agriculture, manufacturing, and many other sectors, will insulate it from outside influences for the foresee- able future. "When you hear about the problems in the [Canadian] economy, a lot of those problems just aren't going to affect Manitoba and they're not go- ing to affect the service industry [in the province], including accountants and lawyers," he says. King says large firms elsewhere that specialize in merger and acquisition work are going to be hit hard because that line of business is driven by capital markets, which have been in freefall for months, and access to equity, which has all but dried up. "Winnipeg has little or no big national equity transactions so we have nothing to lose," he says. "The markets that are hurting aren't markets where firms in Win- nipeg, Saskatchewan, and even Edmonton are doing work." Litigators are par- ticularly bullish on the future. Robert Tapper, founding partner of Tapper Cuddy LLP, is confident his Winnipeg-based litiga- tion boutique is recession proof. "I have never found a dearth of people willing Robert Tapper eaders of law firms in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are confident they'll be able to dodge the economic mal- ThE PRAIRIES to sue each other. It's the nature of the beast," he says, noting litigation work went up by "quantum leaps" during the last major recession. "People would start to chase fringe income. Instead of doing a deal, [they'd say] 'let's sue on the deal that didn't get done,'" he says. Tapper says people will slip and fall on ba- nana peels in Wal-Mart and corporations will get into multi-million- dollar disputes regard- less of what's happening in the economy "People like to blame it on the lawyers but they're the ones gen- erating all this action," he says. Faron Trippier, a partner at Hill De- Faron Trippier war Vincent in Winnipeg, agrees. He says some commercial clients are more interested in litigating matters when the economy is hitting the brakes than when business is booming. "The willingness of a commercial client to spend resources litigating may increase in a downward economic time because the client needs that money. In good economic times, they'd look at litigation as being an un- warranted expense and move on with life," he says. Trippier says he hasn't seen any in- dication that the amount of litigation work will change for the worse in the short term. "When there's an economic downturn, litigation remains constant; there are no great ups and downs. I think you'll see increases in work in certain practice areas, such as bankruptcy and insolvency," he says. "I ride the elevator with lawyers from three different law firms. Everybody is busy." The Conference Board of Canada, one of the country's leading economic 8 FEBRU AR Y 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com forecasters, recently downgraded its provincial outlook but it's still pre- dicting 3.6-per-cent GDP growth in Saskatchewan in 2009, following up on 5.2-per-cent growth in 2008, and 2.4-per-cent in Manitoba this year, after 2.7-per-cent growth last year. The Canadian increase in GDP, meanwhile, is expected to be 1.5 per cent in 2009 after 0.7 per cent in 2008. "No province will be sheltered from the storm of uncertainty hitting the global economy. However, the Prairies will remain on a strong foot- ing [in 2009] as they largely avoid the economic turbulence," says the Confer- ence Board. Chris Donald, one of the managing Chris Donald partners of Saskatoon-based Robertson Stromberg Pedersen LLP, says caution is ruling the day even in a province with a red-hot economy. Even though the firm's lawyers are being run "a little ragged" by the amount of work in their inboxes, the firm isn't "hiring like crazy." "Four months ago, if the right person had come along, we'd have snapped them up right away. Now we're saying 'hold on a second, better be a little careful here.' Caution is creeping in," he says. Donald says he's confident the Sas- katchewan economy will keep churn- ing out impressive growth. The Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., for example, the world's largest fertilizer enterprise, continues to make "huge" investments in its operations and there will be some lag time until they filter through to the economy. "We're still optimistic about the econ- omy out here but it's tempered a little bit," he says. "We're not seeing any crisis on the horizon for the amount of legal work we're doing. We've been busy and it looks like we're going to continue to be busy. But we've got to be careful because one never knows." — GEOFF KIRBYSON gmkirbyson@shaw.ca