Canadian Lawyer

in many ways and leading many league tables, not later than last year. I think the lessons that we have to learn from that — from what I could see is a governance issue, a lack of transparency in the way the firm was managed, and I think that' a lesson for all of us. I mean we're advising our clients on good governance and what is good governance, and in a law firm, it' s important to have checks and balances. It' s s important, we believe, in an open and transparent system for our partnership. MENDES DA COSTA: I think we have to step back a bit because the first thing that's important for the partners is the partnership. The partnership as a whole has to actually realize that we are in changing economic times. You can't respond until you accept that, and if your partnership is anything like mine, you've got partners at various degrees of knowl- edge of what really is happening. Some people are happy in their own corner, they're doing their own thing and they don't really know what's going on or it doesn't affect them that much. The start- ing point goes back [to] the old model, which is growth for the sake of growth is good. That model is gone. That doesn't exist anymore. Growth has to be strate- gic. I hire this person. What is it doing for me? Why am I bringing this person on board? Why am I bringing this expertise in-house? These are really the questions that we have to ask ourselves. WATCH OUR LAW FIRM MANAGEMENT ROUNDTABLE ONLINE AT CANADIANLAWYERMAG.COM Futurecasting for the profession, live Sept. 3 Globalization & outsourcing, live Sept. 10 Recruiting & lateral movement, live Sept. 17 Articling, live Sept. 24 Sponsored by: DAWE: Well, in my first year of part- nership, our firm went through a com- plete rebirth. We split pretty much down the middle and re-formed the new firm out of the ashes of the previous firm, and I think that there's an awful lot of people that don't know that happened because I think it turned out that it was managed quite well, but I've seen what you can do taking a law firm apart and putting it back together again, and I think put- ting it back together again better than it was before. So yes, I've seen some very dramatic changes, and in order to do them, you have to have the right people at the table, because I think if different people had stayed than the ones that did, I wouldn't be sitting here today having this conversation with you. www.phoenix-legal.com www.canadianlawyermag.com 34 SEPTEMBE R 2012 www.CANAD I AN Lawyermag.com ntitled-1 1 12-08-17 11:49 AM On different partnership models MACKAY: I think that we're seeing an awful lot more of . . . not just two-tier, but multi-tier partnerships. We're seeing that, not so much in Canada, but in the U.S. But when a firm embraces the two-tier or a multi-tier partnership, if they use that to avoid decisions — not a good idea. If they use it as a pathway to equity partnership, so that it is a step along the way, in that the mindset of you have to be a partner to make partner because you have to have that credibility on the street, that's a way to use it on the way up. And it's also a way to use it at the other end or the other arch of the career, where you can become a non-equity partner as part of the path to retirement. I've definitely seen that. But where you're seeing income partnership as a way to avoid a decision or to create, perhaps, a bottleneck so that an income partner never has those business development skills, but does great work, [that] can become a bottleneck to that next layer of

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