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GLOBAL REACH, REGIONAL FOCUS The top 10 Ontario regional firms are proud of their mid-market positions but say that doesn't mean they can't serve clients around the world. By Robert Todd Canadian Lawyer last ranked them along with their Quebec peers in 2006, two of the top three have moved on or out. The top firm, McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP, has rebranded itself as McMillan LLP and combined forces with Lang Michener LLP to join the national crowd. And who could for- get the March 2007 dissolution of the once-formidable Goodman and Carr LLP, which placed third in the 2006 rankings? "I think that's to our benefit," Torkin Manes LLP managing partner Jeffrey Cohen says of these departures from the mid-market. He says the hollowing out has made it easier to identify the clients his firm is O pportunities have certainly opened up for Ontario's f u l l - s e r v i c e regional firms in recent years. Since chasing, and better tailor its services and marketing efforts to them. "We've stayed the course. We know who we are; we understand where our limita- tions are, and we don't worry about what we can't do. We focus on what we can do." At a time when plenty of noise is being made by global law firms eager to shake up the Canadian legal services How we did it Canadian Lawyer asked lawyers and in-house counsel from across Canada to vote on Ontario's top full-service, regional firms. They were asked to rank their top 10 firms from a preliminary list, with a chance to nominate a firm that was not included on the list. Respondents' rankings were based on firms' regional service coverage, client base, notable mandates, service excellence, and legal expertise. To be considered in the vote, firms were required to have offices only in the province of Ontario and offer a wide range of legal services. The final rankings were deter- mined through a points system, in which firms were rewarded on a sliding scale for the number of first to 10th-place votes received. 34 M AY 2011 www. CANADIAN Lawyermag.com marketplace, WeirFoulds LLP man- aging partner Lisa Borsook suggests firms should consider their bread-and- butter specialties when deciding which format to adopt. "I certainly don't need a national platform to do litigation in the Superior Court or the Court of Appeal, or for that matter the Supreme Court of Canada — they're all located in Ontario," she points out. "The same