University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (School of Law) Law School April 1993 Growing Pains: The Why and How of Canadian Law Firm Expansion Ronald J. Daniels University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/law_series Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Daniels, R. J. (1993). Growing Pains: The Why and How of Canadian Law Firm Expansion. 147-206. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/law_series/16 Reprinted from University of Toronto Law Journal, Volume 43, Issue 2, 1993, pages 147-206. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/law_series/16 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Growing Pains: The Why and How of Canadian Law Firm Expansion Abstract Over the last decade, the Canadian corporate law firm, like its counterparts in other industrialized countries, has undergone a profound transformation, the most remarkable feature of which has been the rapid growth of individual firms. Whereas a mere decade ago only one Canadian firm could boast of having more than 100 lawyers, today there are at least 19 firms that can make this claim. Accompanying the firms' rapid growth has been their steady expansion into distant national and international markets. Significantly, even when that expansion has been confined to local markets, law firms have invoked a much broader array of growth instruments than in the past. In place of singular reliance upon the standard practice of recruitment directly from law schools and subsequent promotion through the ranks, law firms have shown themselves willing to deploy other methods including lateral recruitment ('cherry picking'), greenfielding, affiliations,and mergers.