The growing trend for local law firms to become multinationals could increase service for clients – although industry insiders speculate that it could also drive up fees.
Warren Smith, managing partner at the Counsel Network, told Business in Vancouver that increasing a law firm's international focus could also increase its operating costs.
But Fasken Martineau managing partner William Westeringh stressed that his firm's partners would bear any technology or other integration costs related to his firm's pending merger with Johannesburg-based Bell Dewar.
"There are market rates for what we do," he said. "We compete in Vancouver with Bull Housser Tupper [LLP], Farris [Vaughan Wills & Murphy LLP], Blake [Cassels & Graydon LLP] and others, so if we tried to raise our rates we'd lose clients locally."
Fasken announced on October 22 that it plans to merge with Johannesburg-based Bell Dewar. The merger would make give Fasken largest international footprint of any Canadian law.
The integration of the two firms is expected to be completed by February 2013.
Fasken's move comes on the heels of London-based Norton Rose merging with two Canadian law firms in the past couple of years: Ogilvy Renault LLP in May 2011 and MacLeod Dixon LLP in January 2012.
Norton Rose bills itself as "Canada's legal pipeline to the world" because Ogilvy Renault had a strong Montreal presence and MacLeod Dixon had a significant presence in Calgary and Toronto. While Norton Rose has no Vancouver base, some speculate that a merger with a local law firm could be in the cards.
Fasken's Westeringh would not rule out a merger with a multinational partner, but he said that such a pact would have to be in clients' interests.
The South African merger, for example, boosts Fasken's reputation and capacity to help international mining companies, he said.
The merger has been part of a long-term strategy for Fasken, which first gained a Vancouver foothold around the turn of the century when it merged with what was then Vancouver's largest law firm: Russell & DuMoulin.
In early 2007, the firm merged with U.K.-based Stringer Saul LLP to create one of the first full-service integrated Canadian-U.K. law firms.
In September 2009, it merged with Paris-based Gravel, Leclerc & Partners. The company bases 140 of its 600 Canadian lawyers in Vancouver. After the Bell Dewer merger closes, 175 Fasken lawyers will be based abroad.
Vancouver-based multinational companies such as Methanex Corp. (TSX:MX) could benefit from the trend to create international law firms, according to its senior counsel Jeremy Chan.
While Methanex doesn't use Fasken, about 90% of its operations are outside of B.C. so it contracts work to many different independent law firms on various continents. Chan said having the opportunity to provide a single firm with a greater volume of work would allow Methanex to negotiate better legal rates. •
