Just read the book
When we asked how Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP was celebrating its 150th anniversary, the firm told us they wouldn’t comment. So we can’t tell you if they’re having a party, but we can tell you that a member of the firm published a book for the occasion, which chronicles the firm’s first 100 years.
Excerpted from Lawyers, Families, and Businesses: The Shaping of a Bay Street Law Firm, Faskens 1863–1963 by C. Ian Kyer (Irwin Law):
On its 150th anniversary Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP is a legal behemoth with over 700 lawyers in six offices across Canada and in London, Paris, and Johannesburg, but it had a modest beginning. In 1863 it began as a two-man firm in a single, half-furnished room in Toronto. The legal work of those founding partners was neither high profile nor particularly remunerative. They did debt collection and insolvency work for mortgage lenders. They almost never appeared in court. One of the two was not even qualified as a barrister. How, then, did the firm they founded become one of the strongest litigation practices in Canada? How did a firm expert in bankruptcy that served the legal needs of banks and insurance companies come to be ranked as the world’s leading mining law firm? It seems a stretch to act for both bank presidents and hard rock miners, yet that is exactly what happened. The modern legal practice of the Faskens firm can best be understood and appreciated by a study of its first 100 years, the century that truly shaped it.
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