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The lights are Lawyers' output is superior to what it has been in the past but that has also heightened expectations from clients and within their firms. It takes a certain type of personality to succeed in the pressure cooker of 24-7 law. By Robert Todd F ew people have observed the profound shift Canada's legal profession has taken in recent years as closely as Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP chairman and CEO Scott Jolliffe. Called to the bar in 1978, he says the pace of legal prac- tice has accelerated to a rate no one would have envisioned back then. When he start- ed out, "You would send a letter out, and it would take several days for the letter to get there. Then they'd consider it on the other end, and a response would come back." That lag time has now evaporated. "When a client asks a question, they want an answer," explains the member of Gowlings' inter- national strategic advisory group. "They are expecting that you are attached to your cellphone or your BlackBerry, and receiv- ing their message as they give it. It's instant messaging on e-mail." It also means lawyers now check their smartphones at least every hour during the day, and especially before going to sleep and upon waking. "That's just the way it is now," says Jolliffe. The rhythm of modern legal practice has also been cranked up through the glo- balization of Canadian businesses, a pro- cess that picked up with a wave of foreign takeovers in the mid-2000s. Lawyers now deal with corporate legal departments in every corner of the world, often in varying time zones. It's now common for lawyers to teleconference in the wee hours of the morning. Jolliffe, who was recently on an 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. schedule for a Japanese file, acknowledges there's simply no way of getting around these odd hours. "If we are a service profession, then we have to be able to adapt to the needs of our clients, and be responsive to them," he says. To meet that promise, Canadian lawyers are being forced to change the way they operate. The dividing line between work time and personal time has disappeared, and only those able to flourish within this new reality will survive in the modern era of 24-7 law. Many lawyers have turned to techno- logical innovation as a means of keep- ing up with the increasing client demands and volume of work they face. The results over the years have been astounding — Brock Gibson, chairman of Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP, estimates the productivity of lawyers is now up to four times as great as when he entered the profession in 1983. Yet Donald Belovich, a corporate law partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto, says this superior output has further heightened expectations lawyers face from both within www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com JAN UARY 2011 33 alw a y s on