Canadian Lawyer

22 M A R C H 2 0 1 7 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m wo pieces of framed artwork sit propped up against the wall next to Norman Bacal's new desk at the Toronto offices of intellectual property firm Smart & Biggar Fetherstonaugh. The space is rather sparse — he hasn't spent a lot of time here yet. Three years after the tumultuous collapse of Heenan Blaikie LLP and a stint as counsel at Dentons Canada, Bacal is taking on a new challenge for Smart & Biggar as co- chairman of IP strategy. His mission now is to help com- panies develop their IP portfolio and, in his words, wield it as "either a sword or a shield." The idea is to give the C-suite level advice on how to better identify the value of an organization's IP holdings. It's something the firm has been doing in Montreal, led in that city by managing partner François Guay. Bacal's job is to recruit lawyers to put the same model in place for the Toronto market. The role at Smart & Biggar comes after taking time to write a book reflecting on his professional career and the ultimate meltdown of his professional life's work — Heenan Blaikie. It's a self-reflective, personal account — he names names and says he's "prepared to live with it." "I like to think I've been fair with everyone," he says confidently, acknowledging that some players close to the drama may not like what he has to say. "Some will say I wasn't hard enough on myself or wasn't hard enough on Guy [Tremblay] and some from Toronto will say I wasn't hard enough on Roy [Heenan] and others will say you should not have said anything bad about Roy." Three years ago, Bacal was in a very different state of mind sit- ting in a very different office on the 28th floor of the Bay Adelaide Centre. As he writes in Breakdown: The Inside Story of The Rise and Fall of Heenan Blaikie, on Feb. 14, 2014, he sat alone in his office, located on a floor of the Heenan office suites that were now "empty, stripped of any sign of life." It was nine days after the partners of Heenan Blaikie voted to dissolve the storied firm that had been home to prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. Bacal's 16-year run as national co-managing partner ended in 2012, but he had returned at the 11th hour in a last-ditch effort to save the firm. "I failed. We failed. It was a stressful period for everyone," he says. Writing the book was "cathartic," at least in the beginning stages of the process, Bacal explains. It was at the prompting of his wife Sharon that he took pen to paper. "I remember having a discussion with my wife in the kitchen and she said, 'You have a choice, either go for therapy' — because I had a lot of anger — 'or start writing it down.'" She handed him a book with blank pages. C R O S S E X A M I N E D ROBIN KUNISKI T Heenan Blaikie breakdown Three years after the collapse of the law firm he helped build, Norman Bacal reflects with his version of the inside story By Jennifer Brown

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