Near the end of December, Minden Gross LLP announced that it would soon shut its doors forever. The mid-size law firm, which has been in business for more than 70 years, published a brief notice on its website, explaining that it “can no longer be viable over the long term” and will “implement a wind-down plan over the next few months.”
At that moment, the Minden Gross website promoted a legal team of 55 lawyers, including 20 associates and 35 partners. By January, law firms throughout Toronto had already started to scoop up lawyers from the wreckage. Today, Precedent can report that 40 of those 55 lawyers have found a new professional home.
The breakneck pace of that hiring spree has a recent historical precedent. A decade ago, when Heenan Blaikie LLP imploded, nearly all of its lawyers relocated to other firms in a matter of months. In the wake of the Minden Gross collapse, the legal marketplace has adhered to the same playbook, absorbing the vast majority of the firm’s lawyers in hardly any time at all. The implication is clear: law firms are once again confident that they can profit from the client roster of a fallen competitor.
Below, Precedent has compiled a chart that shows where most of the lawyers who worked at Minden Gross in late December have landed. We’ve relied on a wide range of sources: press releases, LinkedIn posts, law-firm websites, the Law Society lawyer database and other research. In each column, we’ve sorted the lawyers based on the job title they held at Minden Gross, though some have taken on a different role at their current workplace. As the chart makes plain, the abrupt reshuffling of legal talent has had a material impact on the makeup of law firms throughout the city.
In the event that we’ve left out a Minden Gross lawyer who has secured a new position, readers can contact Precedent’s editorial team. We’ll update the chart as additional information becomes available.
Updates: On March 18, we added new information to the chart, bringing the total number of Minden Gross lawyers who’ve joined another firm to 43. Then, on April 1, an additional set of updates brought the number to 45. A month later, on May 1, an update increased the total number to 48. On June 4, we published an update that raised the total number of lawyers on the chart to 51.