Heenan Blaikie
The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
In 1973, three idealistic young lawyers in Montreal established Heenan Blaikie. It would become one of Canada’s highest-profile law firms, counting former prime ministers, premiers, cabinet ministers, and Supreme Court justices in its ranks. It was like a family, according to many who worked there. But it was a dysfunctional family. In 2014, the firm’s dramatic collapse became front-page news.
Heenan Blaikie is the fascinating story of a respected law firm that buckled under weak governance and management. Adam Dodek, an unbiased outsider, analyzes the origins, evolution, and demise of the firm. Heenan Blaikie seemed to punch above its weight: bilingual, humane, national with international aspirations. But just underneath its unique culture as a kinder, gentler law firm – as revealed by the author’s extensive interviews with firm lawyers and legal-industry insiders – lay workplace bullying, challenges for women and visible minority lawyers, and sexual harassment.
Dodek astutely situates the firm’s rise and fall within the context of events of the time: the 1970s oil shock, Quebec separatism, the flight of business from Montreal to Toronto, economic expansion from the 1980s to the early 2000s, and the 2008 financial crisis. Heenan Blaikie is a meticulous account that is gripping from beginning to end.
This lively investigation of the forces that shape law firm culture is a must-read for lawyers and law students, businesspeople, managers, members of the judiciary, and others intrigued by the whys and hows of corporate collapse.
Visit Adam Dodek's website: www.adamdodek.ca.
An incredible story of a titanic competition in a great law firm between the best of legal professionalism and the most seductive of market imperatives. Part Agatha Christie, part Icarus, part Bonfire of the Vanities, and all painfully magnetic. Adam Dodek is a brilliant storyteller.
I had trouble putting Adam Dodek’s book down. It is a compelling and informative read, probably the first of its kind to carefully document and critically analyze the evolution of a law firm from its origin to its eventual collapse.
Dodek has written a very lively and readable book, full of large and colourful personalities, pithy quotations, and dramatic incident. But it does not just tell a fascinating and somewhat tragic story – it is also full of analysis of the deficiencies of governance and management that were longstanding at Heenan Blaikie but that became especially problematic after the mushroom growth of the firm in the 1990s and later.
Adam Dodek tells the story of the people of Heenan Blaikie in the context of the evolution of Canadian law firms and the practice of law. The making and unmaking of Heenans provides a cautionary tale of the collision between often-laudable personal goals, incoherent collective strategy and governance, and market realities. This is an interesting and instructive account.
I love the mixture of law, business, politics, and history! And, of course, the research is awesome.
Adam Dodek is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. Among his numerous publications are In Search of the Ethical Lawyer; The Canadian Constitution, Third Edition, named by the Hill Times as one of the top 100 books on Canadian public policy; and Solicitor-Client Privilege, which won the Walter Owen Book Prize. He is a recipient of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Prize for Academic Excellence, the Mundell Medal for excellence in legal writing, and the Law Society of Ontario’s Law Society Medal. He is also a director of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics and the Canadian Legal Information Institute, and a past governor of the Law Commission of Ontario.
Preface
Prologue: What a Party!
Foundations
1 The Handshake: Creating a New Law Firm
2 Building a Law Firm: The First Decade in Montreal
3 The Game Changer: Pierre Trudeau Comes on Board
4 “A Different Kind of Law Firm”: Creating a Unique Culture
5 On the Verge: A Law Firm Seeking to Go Where?
6 Launching Toronto: Moving to the Centre of the Universe
7 Joe Groia: An Outsider among Outsiders
8 Toronto in the 1990s: Building an Office, Building a Brand
9 The Culture Crystallizes: “A Kinder, Gentler Law Firm”
10 Not Torys? Struggling to Define an Identity and a Vision
Erosion
11 The Donaldson Interlude: Everyone Deserves a Second Chance
12 The Lure of Growth: Becoming a National Law Firm
13 The Critical Years: 1993–98
14 The New Millennium: The Culture Begins to Fray
15 A “Hotel for Lawyers”: Law Firm Partnerships
16 “A Family Business”: Governance and Management
17 Bigger than the Firm: Marcel Aubut
18 The Persistence of White Male Power: Women and Diversity in Big Law
19 The End of the Decade: End of the Dream
Collapse
20 The Money Wells Dry Up: Castor Holdings and Atomic Energy
21 We’ll Always Have Paris: International Follies
22 Lawyers, Guns, and Money: African Misadventures
23 Double Trouble: Botched Succession
24 Quicksand and Crisis: Coffee and Kleenex
25 Implosion: The Final Weeks
26 Cleaning Up: When a Law Firm Fails
Conclusion
Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index