Singular Sensations

How to find comfort in instability
How to find comfort in instability

Wanna know what you get when you try to photograph three ambitious sole practitioners in the middle of August? A headache. When you see the wonderful photos in our feature story of Marcela Saitua, Stacie Glazman and Jordan Nahmias, you should know that it took some kind of miracle (and a trip to cottage country) to get these lawyers pictured in our pages. But that was kind of the point.

When we called Marcela, she was leaving for Italy the next day on a family vacation and would be gone for three weeks. Jordan was moving his office. And Stacie was up at her cottage. A headache for an editor, but an inspiration for many lawyers.

As you’ll learn from “The power of one” (p 25), many sole practitioners today are building impressive niche practices, while maintaining schedules with plenty of flexibility — allowing them to travel, eat lunch with their kids, start a film festival or join a board. Sure, they may be hard to find in the last weeks of summer, but they’ve carved out niches for themselves and they are defining law in new ways.

And it’s a good thing, too. This year marks the fifth year of the Precedent Hireback Watch. Since 2009, we have been tracking the number of students hired back as first-year associates at the 17 largest law offices in Toronto (16 Bay Street firms plus the DOJ). While there are plenty of reasons why a firm might not hire a student back and you can’t look at any one firm in any one year to draw any telling conclusions, the five-year trend tells us something loud and clear: Bay Street is hiring fewer new lawyers. Since the launch of our watch, there has been a seven percent drop in the total number of students hired back.

While the number of law grads looking for work in Ontario is on the rise, the number of new associate positions at these employers has gone from 338 to 315. Add to this the buzz about a “capital call” at one Bay Street firm (“Cash back,” p 11) and I don’t see the  number swinging upward anytime soon.

The fact that the traditional way of doing things doesn’t seem as stable and secure as it did when I was starting out in law doesn’t have to be viewed as a bad thing. This might be a good time to think creatively about your career and take risks. I’m all for that. As long as you invite me up to your cottage to tell me all about it.


We won!
Here’s our former intern Rose Hendrie and our associate editor Christina Cheung showing off their prizes at the Kenneth R. Wilson Awards this year. The awards recognize outstanding Canadian business and trade publications. Rose and Christina were part of the team that helped Precedent earn the title of Website of the Year. In addition to this gold medal honour, we also took home two silvers: Best Cover and Best Art Direction of a Complete Issue — both for last year’s summer magazine featuring the winners of the 2012 Precedent Setter Awards.

We are super proud. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to Precedent’s success.