Canadian Lawyer

BLANCHARD: At McCarthys, we've been doing client surveys for four or five years now, and it' the firm. We have a very well-structured key client program. So we have 37 key clients in our firm, and we have 200 other important relationships that we maintain, and we try for all the key clients and most of the significant clients to perform a cli- ent survey every 18 to 24 months, and it' s now in the culture of actually part of the communication that you must have with the clients. s MENDES DA COSTA: You have to have a relationship with the client and maybe in a large corporate environment, there is not a defined relationship, per se. With a lot of my clients, I've got every- thing from small clients to some large corporations, but because of the number of transactions we're dealing with, there' quent communication back and forward by e-mail. I've got one client where about every four to six weeks, we have a confer- ence call. So we're on top of things and if anything is going [off] the rails or if there' s fre- any problems, they come up there. I can see you can have a problem if s you've got three, four, [or] five different partners in a firm servicing one particular client in different areas. Then you've got some interesting problems because you've got to make sure, in that particular case, that you really are seeing, talking, and listening to the clients and, for some of our larger clients, we actually would go visit them or you'll meet up with them at a conference, and so instead of hiring somebody to do that, there is an annual meeting with the client. egy, similar to the accounting firm, but then there are a lot of other spin-offs and practice areas, boutiques that are popping up. I think Canada' Fitting into the global marketplace MACKAY: There' s the mega-firm strat- of our banking system and because of our natural resources, oil and gas, [and] min- ing, and that' s what firms are looking for. SONBERG: The accounting firms have really figured this thing out great. They all have international structures. The work they do is a little bit different on audits and they can feed the work. The question s attractive now because is do law firms work the same way? Do clients hire law firms because they're a national or international law firm, or do they hire lawyers? To the extent that they're hiring lawyers for a transac- tion, being part of an international name could cause conflicts, could cause detri- ments to attracting certain work. We have taken the approach that we have relation- ships and that if we need [or] if our client has a need in another country, we will find the best law firm. BLANCHARD: We've where Canada is a champion in the world economy, we're going to be able to com- pete on a global basis, and we play at the highest level of expertise. So it' decided that services, it's mining, it's oil and gas, it's IT s financial infrastructure, and, in those areas and some others, we make sure that we can compete with any global law firm. In a lot of cases, we go to the world with some of our clients and we go quite far and away and quite deeply in the way we accom- pany some of our clients. For any firm that is assessing the ful and new for some people in our firm and it might be disastrous for others. them indigestion. And we've thought about it, thought about it seriously. But for us, it would be the end of us. It might be something wonder- MENDES DA COSTA: We have the advantage of being a boutique IP firm. When we talk about referral networks, we've had referral networks since the prac- tice started. The nature of the practice requires that we work with people in different countries. So if my client needs a patent in Japan, they need a trademark in Korea, whatever it is, we do have to outsource that. We don't do it ourselves. We have to know where to send the work, and over the years, we've built what you can call a referral system. Lessons learned from the Dewey & LeBoeuf implosion SONBERG: In the case of Dewey & LeBoeuf that blew up, it' international positioning or strategy, con- flicts are a consideration, and so yes, in Canada, we have specific and quite strict rules about conflicts, so we have to be very careful, and that' one of the components of thinking about [international work]. s why it has to be DAWE: What we are, at 40 lawyers, is what I'll call a nice chewable morsel, and I'm not saying that because I'm looking to market us as a nice chewable morsel, but because we get approached. We're a wonderful beachhead for some U.S. or international law firm that wants to dip its toe into Toronto because we're just big enough to give them a presence and just small enough that we're not going to cause point at a lot of things that they did wrong. One of the things that I think was key — and this has been said before them and will be said forever — paying a partner to come across the street to join your firm more than a partner that you're going to pay that' s now easy to 10 or 15 or 20 years has to be a mistake, unless there' seen that makes it make sense, and aside from the economics of it, it' that partners get of suddenly there's a can't think of. There's nothing that I've s the feeling s been with your firm for five or s some circumstance that I greater value for someone coming across and contributing in the same manner that I have without any history with this orga- nization just astounds me. BLANCHARD: The issue of Dewey & LeBoeuf — it was an exceptional firm www.CANAD I AN Lawyermag.com SEPTEMBE R 2012 33

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