Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m A P R I L 2 0 1 6 37 wants to do family law they rarely apply for articles with a firm such as his because "the experience is necessarily more limited." But now the wave of applications "tells me the bigger firms are hiring fewer students." Barkauskas's advice to unemployed law- yers and students, in fact to the whole profession, is "be flexible." He tells his own story of how he was once in-house counsel for Canadian Airlines. But when it "implod- ed," as he puts it, in 2000, and hundreds of people lost their jobs, he made a dramatic career transition. It was a transition that surprised even him. "I hated family law," he says, "but when I stuck my toe in it, turned out I loved it. I tell young lawyers you don't find your career; your career finds you." The courtrooms and hallways in Cal- gary's downtown Courts Centre are as busy as ever. A lot of people think bad times will be good for members of the criminal bar. It is not quite as simple as that, says Andrea Urquhart, who has been a criminal lawyer in Calgary for about five years. She and three other lawyers have just opened a new firm, Roulston Urqu- hart Criminal Defence. Urquhart says they are all working hard to make it a suc- cess. "It would be fair to say everyone is feeling the impact of the downturn," says Urquhart. "There is work; it's just the type of work that is changing." That doesn't necessarily mean a reduction in clients. What is changing is the way the clients pay for their defence. In good times, a high-rolling oil worker, charged with assault, for example, would think nothing of laying out top dollar for a good lawyer, but those kinds of clients have pretty well dried up. "They're still getting assault charges," says Urquhart, "but they just can't afford a lawyer to help them with it. So we're seeing a lot more legal aid files." The legal aid fee scale is, of course, significantly below what most private clients are charged, and legal aid itself is struggling because of underfunding by the cash-strapped Alberta government. "I think we're all feeling the hit. But as a young lawyer, the downturn can impact you in ways it may not impact people who have been at the bar for 20 years." Urquhart says the dwindling stock of private retainer clients tends to rely increasingly on more established practitioners. But she isn't discouraged. "Calgary always tends to come back from these kinds of downturns; it's got a lot of energy. There's still a lot of people who need the help of criminal defence lawyers." But she admits, "We are all feeling cautious." There is at least one area of the law that has not been hit by the recession: per- sonal injury law. "People are always going to get into accidents," says Litwiniuk & Co.'s managing partner Todd Litwiniuk. Because Litwiniuk, like most personal injury firms, operates on a contingency fee basis, "no costs up front, no costs during litigation," clients only pay legal fees if they win their personal injury lawsuit, and most success- ful suits include fees in the settlement. In fact, Litwiniuk & Co. has expanded. Last month, it opened a new branch office in the south part of Calgary and it may soon be hiring. Fred Litwiniuk, Todd's brother and a partner in the firm, points out that during bad economic times business can some- times improve because unemployed people lack the safety net provided by a regular job. "Typically, when things go bad, they're more likely to resort to the legal system." However, with few exceptions, the law business is feeling this recession. But Cal- gary would not be loved and hated across the country if it was full of complacent quitters. Most businesses including the law business are tightening belts, cutting frills, and not turning down any clients. The mountains remain eternal just an hour's drive from the city and visible from the office towers downtown. The air is clean, and the sparkling Bow River runs right through town. "This has got to be one of the best places to live and practise law in Canada," says Lougheed, an undaunted and unabashed ambassador for the city in both good and bad times. For senior lawyers, such as Lougheed, confidence in Calgary and its economy remains unshaken. The across-the-board consensus is that things will "settle down" in about a year. "Calgary is resilient," says fam- ily lawyer Barkauska. He points to this city's history: "Most people came to Alberta with nothing, so it is a pretty optimistic culture." As for getting through the province's cur- rent hard times, "We'll weather it," he says. "We always do." Calgary city report Sources: Law Society of Alberta, Calgary Real Estate Board *The Law Society of Alberta recently created the option for lawyers to select their home address as a default mailing address but when they select this option, they would be excluded from the firm count and slightly skew the data. The Law Society of Alberta will be addressing this issue soon. 219 lawyers took that option. 36% 929 $75,000-85,000 a year of members in Alberta who practise in Calgary Number of lawyers at firms with 11 to 50 lawyers 1,706 * Number of lawyers at firms with 50 or more lawyers First-year associate salary in Calgary Calgary by the numbers 9,678 $539,733 1,252 36% Total number of of law society members with active practising status in Alberta (does not include government lawyers, pro bono lawyers) As of February 2016, the average cost of a detached home in Calgary was The number of lawyers in Calgary working in firms with 10 lawyers or less 39% of lawyers in Alberta who are female of lawyers in private practice in Calgary who are female

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