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 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7 37 Edmonton By Michael Ganley You might have heard that Daryl Katz, the reclusive billionaire owner of the Edmonton Oilers, recently built a new hockey arena in downtown Edmonton. The rink was always pitched by Katz and his team as the spark that would light an explosion of downtown redevelopment, and with some $313 million of public money thrown into the project, there was a lot of interest to see if that would in fact happen. Now, barely a year after Rogers Place opened, it's safe to say the prediction of a renaissance is coming true. The city of Edmonton estimates that the arena has spurred $2.5 billion in development so far, and the area around it remains abuzz with construction. The city has started to move into its own new building near the arena, and Stantec, the Edmonton-based engineering giant, is building a 66-storey tower that will be the tallest in the country outside of Toronto. Beyond those build- ings, there's a host of condo towers, hotels and cultural institutions that are taking shape downtown. It's safe to say the build- ing boom has led to a sense of economic optimism in Edmonton, even with oil still struggling to hit $50 a barrel. Adam Merrick, a partner with MLT Aikins who specializes in commercial lending and real estate development, says this explosion of construction helped buoy Edmonton through the 2015-2016 reces- sion. He says Edmonton's story is different from that of Calgary and that of the prov- ince as a whole. "Edmonton has certainly weathered the storm," he says. "It's because we are less tied into oil producers than Calgary. We have more government, more owner-operator entrepreneurs and a lot of the construction has had a trickle-down effect." Merrick says the dearth of merger and acquisition activity in the oil and gas sector, which took such a toll on Calgary, has been less pronounced in the provincial capital. Aside from government and the recent construction boom, Edmonton's economy is also helped by a large health-care sector and prominent contributions from higher education, with the University of Alber- ta, Grant MacEwan University and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology being just the three most prominent post- secondary institutions in the city. James Casey, a former managing part- ner of Field Law who recently returned to full-time practice, says Edmonton is served by a healthy mix of law firms, from global giants such as Dentons to the national and regional firms and on down through the smaller, locally focused firms and boutique practices. He says independent regional law firms such as Field, which has 65 lawyers in Edmonton, 55 in Calgary and five in Yel- lowknife, can thrive even when faced with competition from global firms. "There are few economies of scale that accrue in legal practice," he says. "Whether you have 3,000 lawyers or 300 lawyers or 30 lawyers, the cost for you to produce a certain product is not necessarily different." Some services can be commoditized and the price driven down, but that's not the work he's chasing. "For a firm like Field, the value proposition has to be that we will not compete against the global firms in all areas, but where we identify areas to compete, we will provide a product of similar or better quality, we will do it at a significantly lower price and we will work collaboratively with our clients." One business practice that has trans- ferred from the oil and gas sector into the legal practice in the last couple of years — as a direct result of the oil-price collapse — is the drive for cost certainty. When oil prices dropped as low as $27 in early 2016, producers went back to all their service suppliers and demanded not only lower pricing but certain pricing. "Companies have put a lot of pressure downward on billable rates," says Corinne Petersen, a boutique insurance litigator and bencher with the Law Society of Alberta. "In the profession as a whole, there's a lot of pres- sure to figure out a more economical way of delivering service." These include more alternative fee arrangements, more frequent and detailed requests for proposal, increased focus on process improvement and the use of legal pricing consultants to negotiate fees with law firms. "Some clients want price reduc- tions, but more important is price cer- Alberta's capital is more diversified than Calgary and lawyers are optimistic that things are looking up

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