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BAY STREET MEETS PORTAGE AND MAIN regional wrap-up legal community when not one but two of them moved to Winnipeg this spring. Taylor McCaffrey LLP welcomed B estates and trust specialist Jennifer Pfuetzner while MTS Allstream put out the welcome mat for Paul Beauregard. Their joint arrival was no accident — they're married. The two met while working at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in down- town Toronto. Beauregard then went in- house at Bell Canada while Pfuetzner moved to estates and family law boutique Dickson MacGregor Appell LLP. Beauregard was subsequently approached by the Winnipeg-based telco and the opportunity — in his home town, no less — convinced the pair to make the move. Pfuetzner, a graduate of Osgoode Hall ay Street-trained lawyers don't grow on trees in Manitoba so you can imagine the surprise in the local Law School, says she was happy to find a match for herself at Taylor McCaffrey because the firm represented the best of both her worlds. "It had just the right fit for me. I've had the Bay Street experience and the small firm experience where I essentially ran my own practice. This seems to be a happy medium. I've got the support of having tax specialists and real estate and corporate guys but I still feel like I have a fair amount of auton- omy," she says. "I've already seen a lot of work come my way. A lot of the lawyers here have been consulting with me with respect to their clients." Pfuetzner says she was also attracted by the chance to bring a level of legal specialization that isn't common in Winnipeg. "In Toronto, which is three or four times the size of Manitoba [from a legal community perspective], it's easier to specialize in one's own particular area. There is a volume of work that allows you to do that. Lawyers in Winnipeg practise in more than one core area and tend to have less specialization," she says. Brian Sexton, a tax partner at Taylor McCaffrey, says the addition of Pfuetzner was "huge" on a number of fronts. "The degree of her specialization and her experience in advising high-net-worth clients is something you don't see in Winnipeg. She's a nationally recognized practitioner. We envision that her exper- tise will complement some of our other practitioners to be able to give compre- hensive advice on estate planning mat- ters. It's a reverse brain drain," he says. Pfuetzner says she realizes most of the Toronto traffic is incoming and while the move did represent some upheaval, it wasn't as drastic as it could have been. "I'd spent a fair amount of time in Winnipeg as a visitor and liked it. That made it an easier decision," she says. — GK 14 JULY 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com Litigation_CL_July_09.indd 1 6/15/09 11:18:00 AM