Canadian Lawyer

Eugene Meehan is one of them — are taking a proactive approach by setting up their own firms and taking clients with them long before any discussion of the required time to leave. "Some firms expect you to do a quiet exit at 65 and just as quietly hand over your whole book of business — all the clients you have spent up to four decades assem- bling and servicing," says Meehan. "I am 59, I feel very young, I think I act quite young, my children sometimes tell me so, I run marathons faster or slower than them, depending on the day, and I've got tons to contribute! So in my case, I am pre-planning the future on the basis that I prefer to make decisions now rather than have decisions made later for me." Judges work with full compensation until the age of 75, says Meehan — why can't lawyers? In January, Meehan, along with two other lawyers and a support staff of seven, launched Supreme Advocacy LLP, an appellate advocacy and agency boutique that will help other lawyers take cases to the Supreme Court of Canada and offer specialty advice in complex legal opinions on any area of law. Other lawyers are switching to firms that do not have mandatory retirement policies, crossing the street to work for competitors, or are seen as acqui- sition targets by firms who value the benefit of an experienced lawyer on their team and potential business they bring, says Shekhar Parmar, a director in Calgary for The Counsel Network, a legal recruiting firm. "In lots of ways, the candidates we've talked to, it is more than just an economic issue, it is quite personal, tied into their sense of worth and they are basically being asked to transition away from what they have spent their lives defining themselves as," says Parmar. "There is some real sensitivity when they hit mandatory retirement about the files because the understanding is that when you are ready to retire you are leaving your practice behind as opposed to taking it away." Parmar says there are new oppor- tunities like contract lawyering as projects like infrastructure builds and resource exploitation heat up. He points to McLeod & Co. LLP, a Calgary law firm that is benefiting from a talent recruitment plan designed to boost its own fortunes while providing concrete financial incentives to older lawyers in return for transitioning over their clients and business. For almost three years, McLeod has been actively court- ing older lawyers, typically "55- to 63-year olds on the far side of partner- ship" as part of its strategic plan to grow and become more of a regional player in the Alberta legal market, says man- aging partner Robin Lokhorst, noting the firm has grown to 45 lawyers today from 26 in 2005. Senior practitioners at the big national firms and lawyers from smaller local firms have different concerns, says Lokhorst, "but many of the concerns relate to their exit strategy and in the big firms the exit strategy will often be dictated by whatever policies are in place. And they may certainly intend to have these folks transition their practic- es to younger lawyers, but then, often, the senior lawyers are faced with the dilemma of compensation and a lot of the large firms haven't fully explored and dealt with how you compensate someone for giving away work." Lokhorst says: "We structure a pro- gram where we actually compensate them and it is entirely customized to the individual, what we want from them and what they want from us. We track certain financial measures and we com- pensate them for transitioning clients and transitioning knowledge to people that we have in-house. They know to the penny how these things are calcu- lated and they catch on very quickly and see the benefits." Lokhorst says the firm has hired five older lawyers as a comple- ment to the hiring of younger lawyers and is planning to ramp up the program given its success so far. Toronto intellectual property litiga- tor Don MacOdrum ended up with a competitor firm after he found the clock ticking on his future with McMillan LLP after the firm officially merged with Lang Michener LLP in January 2011. Lang Michener, the firm he articled and spent his whole career with, did not have an age-based retire- ment policy but McMillan did, oblig- ing lawyers to leave at 65. MacOdrum, who just turned 70, suddenly found himself with a non-equity partnership arrangement for compensation and a one-year deadline to move on. IP liti- gation specialists Bereskin & Parr LLP quickly moved in to scoop him up after he casually mentioned that he was looking for a spot during lunch with longtime friend Donald Cameron, who was in the process of merging his IP boutique Cameron MacKendrick LLP with Bereskin. Montreal law firm Robinson Sheppard Shapiro LLP also saw a chance to add bench strength to its team with the addition of two senior lawyers who did not want to retire but had to move on from their firms. Pierre Bourque, a seasoned litigator, moved over to RSS from Quebec regional firm Lavery de Billy LLP, along with Peter S. Martin, most recently an acquisitions and financing lawyer and former chair- man of the business law practice group at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. "It is exciting to have a guy like Peter come to us for at least 10 years and bring talents we need, not just in the actual legal work, but talents of developing clients, how to lead large transactions and get teams put together to work in the interests of clients," says RSS partner Charles Flam, adding that Bourque, in addition to pursuing his passion for litigation, can pass on the benefit of his many years of experience before the courts to nurture younger RSS lawyers. The 77-lawyer firm, which now has seven lawyers aged 65 years and older, recently changed its own age- based compensation scheme because it found that some of its senior partners — including one 82-year-old litigator — "were basically as productive if not more productive than before" and that did not mesh with its policy. Paul Boniferro, national leader of practices and people at McCarthy Tétrault and a labour and employment lawyer, says there are no plans to elimi- nate the firm's mandatory retirement plan. But McCarthys for a few years now has aggressively stepped up its discussions with all partners, includ- ing older lawyers, to make sure that www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com M A RCH 2012 29

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