How this Bay Street partner bolstered his knowledge of the business world

In D.J. Lynde’s line of work, there is no margin for error. The 35-year-old partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP advises banks, private-equity firms and multinational corporations on the most complicated financing and lending arrangements imaginable. Forget a bank loan. In some cases, his clients have to put up billions in collateral to secure billions more in debt from a syndicate of lenders. Lynde is able to navigate the staggering complexity of these transactions with precision.

He did not attain that expertise entirely on his own. As a junior associate, Lynde noticed that, although he understood “how to think about the law at a high level,” he lacked a deeper understanding of business and finance. So he enrolled in the business law specialization of the Osgoode Professional LLM, a rigorous graduate program that he could complete on a part-time basis.

Lynde dove into coursework that covered a range of relevant topics, including bankruptcy, secured lending and securities. In one course, he pored over real-world cases of restructuring after an insolvency, which has proven useful when working on the finances of distressed companies. He also appreciated how the instructors were made up of “an amazing mix of top academics, practitioners and regulators.”

After Lynde completed the program, in 2015, he was armed with knowledge that otherwise would have taken him years to gain in the workplace. “A lot of lawyers think about a deal as: ‘The client asked me to do X, so I’ll do X,’” he says. “But the reason I wanted to become a trusted advisor, and get my LLM, was to go beyond that — to identify problems, walk clients through options and learn from people who’ve been there before me.”