The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50813
MANAGING PARTNER Valuing creativity Q Everyone's ideas are welcomed at Heenan Blaikie, says Guy Tremblay. BY GAIL J . COHEN has been practising law for 37 years and has seen a lot of change. He talks about managing a firm of 480 lawyers and the value it places on creative individuals, part of what has made the firm one of Canadian Business magazine's Top 50 Best Places to Work in Canada. B Q What do you feel are the greatest chal- lenges in your position? The greatest challenge. It's a people business so the biggest challenge, and we always try to focus on that, is to make it a livable environment for our lawyers. It is a value for us to create an environment where people will feel happy to come to work. As you know, we took a lot of pride of being selected in 2007 as one of the 50 Best Places to Work in Canada by Canadian Business magazine. That reward comes with val- ues and they are not spontaneous values. They have to be durable: have been there for a long time and sustained always. So it's a challenge to create that environ- ment because what it underlies is that resources are quite scarce and to retain our people with the new trends going on is more and more of a challenge. There's also the other side of it: the clients. How do you serve them? It has become a climate of competition. Cli- ents are smart. They come with very so- phisticated RFPs and they ask a law firm to play against each other. We were not used to that 20 years ago. I remember the first that went that were the accountants and they survived and we will too. ased in Montreal, Guy Tremblay is national co-managing partner of Heenan Blaikie. At 62, Tremblay What are the greatest rewards? The biggest reward could be the money we make, but money is so funny a value. It's the people that feel at home, that feel it's a great environment, that are happy to work here, and that we have a name that attracts people and makes them want to come and work here. . . . You know a great place, a great name, a good reputation, a good corporate citizen. . . . It's a great reward to see that. There's always tensions, we're lawyers af- ter all. But there's always a way through, a solution. . . . They're very bright, they're very smart but sometimes they come with big egos. It's the nature of the beast. I won't fight that. But they're great peo- ple. Lawyers are very motivating. Q What do you think makes heenan Blaikie one of the best places to work? I think we have values of collegiali- ty, we have values of entrepreneur- ship, we value always that making sure that wherever it comes from — it could be a young associate, a young partner, an older partner, a non-equity part- ner — it's never top down. If you have a good idea and it makes sense, we will develop it, we will push for it. So really what makes us partners is that creativity is always valued. People say because you don't put money as the first value that that means that you're not in the game. That's not true. People live well here, make a good living. Q There are some multinational firms cutting the number of key clients they serve. Does your firm have any such plans? We have to take, sometimes, some decisions in some sectors. It's not to say that we want to get rid of a client to focus more on another but choosing to represent a client sometimes means Guy TREMBLAy that we cannot represent others. Some- times we have to be strategic about who we want to target and who we want to serve and, yes, we're doing that. And it's by necessity sometimes. It's a competitive world out there and you cannot some- times, as we say, serve two masters. If you go with one, it means you're not putting yourself in a position to serve another. There are countless examples in the food, bio-pharma, transport, whatever type of example that forces you to do that. Q heenan Blaikie has high-profile people in the firm such as former prime minister Jean Chrétien and recently retired SCC justice Michel Bastarache. What role do they play in the firm's culture? First of all, they have a tremendous network. These people who have been at a level on the Canadian scene, and even internationally, come with a network and tremendous expertise of decisions that have been taken at a very high level. They come with that bag of expertise to the firm. It is very good for the firm. They are very well liked and appreciated. People definitely see that as a plus, they're proud to say that we belong to the firm that mis- ter and mister so and so are. It's a two-way street. They bring credibility because we have credibility. To read more of GUY TREMBLAY'S interview with Canadian Lawyer, visit us online at canadianlawyermag.com www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com JANU AR Y 2009 15