Canadian Lawyer

30 J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 6 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m Top boutiques Heavy hitters I f the story of boutique law firms and big national shops was ever about the little guy's unlikely vic- tory against a giant, that's no longer the case. "It's not a matter of David versus Goliath and we're the David; we're actually the Goliath," says Gregory Heywood, founding part- ner and a member of the manage- ment committee at Roper Greyell LLP, a Vancouver-based law firm and one of the top 10 vote-getters in this year's Cana- dian Lawyer labour and employment boutique law firms survey. As new areas like privacy and the use of social media in the workplace proliferate, labour and employment boutiques say they have no shortage of exciting work or the legal skills to tackle them. One of the biggest changes in the labour and employment market was the arrival last year of Littler Mendelson PC, which snapped up almost all of the lawyers from a well-established Toronto boutique practice. Calling itself the world's largest labour and employment firm representing manage- ment, Littler opened an office in Toronto in August 2015 with seven lawyers; all but one, office managing shareholder Sari Springer, are from Kuretzky Vassos Henderson LLP. It's the latest move in a series of expansions Littler Mendelson has been undertaking recently, especially in North, Central, and South America, the firm said at the time. It now has more than 1,000 lawyers in 67 offices. It's no secret that traditional labour work is going down due to a decline in union representation, says Heywood, but the areas of human rights, labour arbitration, and the question of duty to accommodate continue to yield work. Still, the employment law market remains extremely tight and com- petitive, according to Janice Rubin, partner at Rubin Thomlinson LLP. Although employment law work remains a vibrant part of practice at Rubin Thomlinson, the firm has found a niche in the workplace investigations, review, and training area, says Rubin, who led a high- profile investigation at the CBC last year of alleged sexual harassment in the workplace by former radio host Jian Ghomeshi. In part due to prominent cases such as that one, employers are more open to doing workplace reviews before problems reach a crisis point, says Rubin, adding her firm is not only called upon to do these reviews but to also provide a unique training program for employers. "I'd say that we are absolutely continuing to grow workplace investiga- tions, which are reactive. We're also now working with employers with a slightly more proactive iteration of that, which is the assessment or the review." If Ontario passes bill C-132, the sexual violence and harassment action plan act, employers will have a statutory obligation to conduct workplace investigations, which could potentially increase work in this area, Rubin also says. Even as Canada's economy faltered in the last year, Hicks Morley Hamilton Stew- art Storie LLP managing partner Stephen Shamie says 2015 was his firm's most suc- cessful of its 43 years. "That's the beauty of labour and employment or human resourc- es law practice because we're busy when the economy is good and we're busy when the economy is poor," says Shamie. "We just do different things." Employment litigation has been a busy area, according to Shamie, who says the creation of the Ontario government's new pension legislation also produced "a ter- rific amount of work" for his firm. Hicks Morley has seen growth in work coming from existing firms as well as new clients, Shamie adds, noting in 2015, the firm hired nine new lawyers, "which is an incredible number for us." In the intellectual property arena, some of the top 10 boutique firms in this year's Canadian Lawyer survey say they're riding the wave of a boom in wearable and virtual reality device innovation and overall with the "Internet of things." Yuri Chumak, of Fleck & Chumak LLP, says: "What we're seeing is a bit of a flourish- ing in the software companies in and around Toronto and so we're helping them compete with the likes of Silicon Valley, where literally there are hundreds if not thousands of patent lawyers working to file IP on behalf of those companies," he The top labour and employment and IP boutiques are in no way the little guys in their practice areas. By Yamri Taddese Canadian Lawyer selected Canada's top intellectual property and labour and employment boutiques by asking readers to rank a long list of notable firms in each area, which was whittled down to a short list through votes drawing on input from our editorial team. The following results are an alphabetical list of the 10 boutique firms in each area that are rated most highly by other lawyers. How we did it:

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