We’ve covered some big stories in my seven years as publisher and editor of Precedent, but nothing in that time has been as big as the collapse of Heenan Blaikie LLP. As we raced to cover the firm’s unfortunate demise, so too did the mainstream media.
We don’t cover the news in the same way as the Globe and Mail. And we don’t try to. When a story makes the front page of the daily papers, we look for a different way to tell it. Our way.
On the day Heenan Blaikie closed its Toronto doors for good, we published an interview with firm founder Peter Blaikie online. Blaikie had candid advice for young lawyers: think twice about partnership. Interested in the human aspect of the collapse, we also posted a story about how three former Heenan lawyers have adjusted to their new positions at Baker & McKenzie LLP.
To get the bigger picture, our news team sought out all the former Toronto Heenan lawyers to find out where they had landed. Our research revealed that in just three short months, more than 80 percent of these lawyers had found new jobs.
And now that the dust has (mostly) settled, we find ourselves curious about a more technical aspect of the fallout. In “What happens when you liquidate a law firm?” we ask a liquidator, an art consultant and a former law librarian to walk us through what exactly happens when a big firm winds up.
Long after a law firm collapse leaves the front page of our daily papers, Precedent will be watching the story — finding the angles that matter to lawyers, talking to the people whose lives and careers have been impacted and watching for trends in the industry.
Predicting what’s to come in the legal profession depends a lot on finding the trendsetters, and luckily we’ve had a lot of practice. This year marks the five-year anniversary of the Precedent Setter Awards. We established these awards to recognize outstanding lawyers in their first 10 years of practice in Ontario. Meet this year’s winners right here. They are an incredibly bright, talented and ambitious group — the ones to watch. As our profession faces fresh challenges and new pressures, it will be lawyers like our award winners whose confidence, talent and sense of humour will see us through. And I can assure you, we’re in good hands.
News kid on the block
As part of Precedent’s continued effort to bring our readers the news that matters most, Daniel Fish has joined the team as our first dedicated news editor. So far, he’s been working hard to keep readers up-to-date not only on Heenan Blaikie, but also on the developments at Trinity Western University and Ontario’s new Law Practice Program. Keep an eye on our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for the latest on legal news.
More from the summer issue:
