Law Times

PAGE 4 NEWS November 24, 2008 • Law Times Some lawyers reluctant to embrace retirement BY DARYL-LYNN CARLSON For Law Times oel Shafer took an early retire- ment from his tax practice at Blakes Cassels and Graydon LLP in the year 2000. But within two years, he was back. "Frankly I missed the profession- J al relationships I had," with both colleagues and clients, says Shafer. Not to mention that the firm had been asking him to return. In Ontario, Shafer's decision to return to practice part time as the firm's counsel is relatively uncom- mon, although some recruiters are already seeing a marginal increase in baby boom generation lawyers seeking part-time or project-based work post-retirement. "As a generation, we're healthier and living longer," acknowledges Karen MacKay, president of Phoe- nix Legal Inc. transition advisory consultants. "Being a lawyer is not what they do, it's who they are and that's a fundamental difference be- tween boomers and pre-boomers and Generation X. It's like taking away your identity." After returning to Blakes, Shafer attended the office three days per week for almost five years before retiring again last December. The experience was a good one because he says he was able to limit his involvement and workload. "I set my goals for what I was going to do and not going to do and stuck to them. I was only in the office three days a week and it was understood I would not be in the other two days," he says. "If you allowed yourself to just drift along, you could get sucked right back in full time very quickly." At Phoenix, professional lawyer coaches assist firms with gover- nance, management, and succes- sion-related planning strategies. Linda Robertson, a former cor- porate lawyer now with Phoenix's Vancouver office, says she's seeing more senior lawyers stay on part time in formal mentoring roles. "What more and more firms are looking at is keeping these senior lawyers on as counsel to the firm and having them men- tor the other lawyers in the firm," she says. "This will often include not just mentoring the younger lawyers but providing counsel to partners on complex matters where a second experienced opin- ion can be very helpful." ables partners to focus on billable hour demands. "While previously, partners would have taken the time to debrief a large deal after completion or review a trial that concluded, now they are more like- ly to just move onto the next file without spending the time men- toring younger lawyers on these important matters," she explains. She says it is also less common She says the mentor role en- for younger lawyers to get op- portunities to attend court with experienced litigators "as the file cannot afford two lawyers on the case if one is coming along pri- marily to learn. So another men- toring opportunity has been lost over the past 20 years. This makes the role of senior lawyers acting as mentors to the firm so vital as they provide mentoring that is harder and harder to come by." Robertson says she is also seeing soon-to-retire lawyers searching out corporate or non-profit board work. "I have found that most lawyers want to continue to be involved either in law, business, or the com- munity but just at a reduced pace" post-retirement, she says. Robertson cites one client who was poised to retire in her mid-50s and realized she "didn't want to go on a 30-year vacation. "Many lawyers want to remain vitally engaged in doing some- thing worthwhile," she says. Randi Bean, a former lawyer and founder of Life After Law, says lawyers increasingly seek op- portunities that will enable them to wind down their work slowly rather than retiring "cold turkey." Her recruitment firm specializes in placing lawyers in roles where they can use their expertise without the billable hour treadmill. "I talk to a lot of people who say they're maybe five years away from retiring and they have ideas of what they want to do when they retire which could be any number of things from consulting to working part time for a firm," says Bean. "Then there are others who decide they want to go work for a company or for government or something a little bit different and they're a little bit less concerned about compensation, they're not doing it for the money." In Alberta, however, lawyers are beginning to work beyond retirement simply due to demand. Alf Peneycad retired as general Dearden quits Harper case BY ROBERT TODD Law Times which I'm sure didn't happen here," Chris Paliare of Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP tells Law Times. "Or you can't fulfil your professional obligations and you're at loggerheads with your client." Paliare's co-counsel on the case, Odette Soriano, says law- yers learned of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP lawyer Richard Dearden's decision to remove himself as Harper's counsel last week during a teleconference call. Soriano says no reason was given for the departure. jobsinlaw jobsinlaw Managing Director, National Committee on Accreditation The Federation of Law Societies of Canada is the national coordinating body of the 14 law societies which are mandated by provincial and territorial law to regulate Canada's 95,000 lawyers and Quebec's 3,500 notaries in the public interest. It is a leading voice on issues of national and international importance relating to the administration of justice. As part of its mandate, the Federation, through the National Committee on Accreditation (NCA), accredits individuals with foreign legal credentials who wish to become members of Canadian law societies. A new senior position, the Managing Director will oversee all NCA operations and in particular, the evaluation of applicants' legal credentials, and the administration of examinations. Working closely with the NCA, its staff and the leadership of the Federation, the Managing Director will help steward the NCA through a period of change and development. The role will evolve as the organization evolves. During the transition phase, the Managing Director will help establish new structures and systems and ensure the continued delivery of quality programming. Over time, the successful candidate will develop strategies, oversee budgets and resources, and lead and build a team. The ideal candidate is a skilled administrator and leader. He or she has a record of building and managing well-run operations and is applauded by peers and clients for service excellence. An effective communicator and strategist with sound analytical skills, the ideal candidate is comfortable interfacing with a range of audiences, which in this role would include members of the NCA, the leadership of the Federation, law societies and other stakeholders. A law degree and experience in credentialing or educational assessment are assets. To explore this exciting Ottawa-based opportunity, please contact Michael Naufal or Michael Williams of Ray & Berndtson Executive Search at (613) 742-3201, or submit your resume to michael.naufal@rayberndtson.ca and michael.williams@rayberndtson.ca lawyer defending the Liberal party in a defamation case says he can't think of a previous instance in which a lawyer has quit representing a client in a high-profile case, which is just what happened when Prime Minister Stephen Harper's counsel stepped down last week. "It occurs when you run into a financial dispute with the client, A comment. WeirFoulds LLP lawyer David Wingfield has stepped in for Dearden, says Soriano. Dearden didn't respond by press time to Law Times' request for eral party due to allegations that Harper knew of an attempt to bribe Independent MP Chuck Cadman, who has since died of skin cancer, to get his vote in 2005 to defeat the minority Liberal government. Paliare says Dearden's departure could slow the case, and noted that the lawyer was on the case "within days" and was involved in for- mulating all strategies, pleadings, affidavits, and cross-examinations. "One has to ask, why in the middle of a case would you switch The $3.5-million defamation case seeks recompense from the Lib- lawyers to somebody who needs to get brought up to speed on that six months' worth of work that you paid for?" he says. Paliare described Dearden as, "One of the premier defamation LT lawyers in the country. He did a very good job for his client. It was a hard-fought battle, but he did what he needed to do for his client, and did an excellent job. He left no stone unturned, I can tell you." jobsinlaw jobsinlaw counsel and vice president legal and compliance of Petro-Canada and received calls from three law firms offering him work. "My initial reaction was, 'No way am I retiring and spending time at a law firm,'" he says. "But after taking the summer off, I rec- ognized I needed something to keep the creative juices flowing." He is now counsel at Macleod Dixon LLP in Calgary where he assists with marketing, client rela- tions, and mentoring, and has hired other retired lawyers to assist the firm on specific projects. There are insurance obligations for lawyers returning to work on a part-time or project basis. In Ontario, the Lawyers' Pro- fessional Indemnity Company provides lawyers working part time with a 40 per cent dis- count for practices averaging 20 hours per week and billings be- low $75,000, says Duncan Gos- nell, LAWPRO's vice president of underwriting. To qualify, the insured must not have had any claims with an indemnity pay- ment within the last five years. Lawyers providing some types of pro bono work for an approved organization could be exempt from purchasing professional in- surance although they must report the work to LAWPRO. Gosnell says roughly seven per cent of lawyers in Ontario are prac- tising on a part-time basis and 13 per cent of those are 65 or older. To assess the rate of claims against older practitioners, LAWPRO re- cently examined their records. The insurer didn't distinguish between part-time and full-time practitioners but did break down its stats according to practice area. It found that 47 per cent of claims against the over-age 65 group were related to real es- tate matters, which accounts for 30 per cent of claims gener- ally. Claims for wills and estates matters were also higher for the older group. The review also looked at the reason for the claims. Just over 35 per cent were due to poor communications, 18 per cent stemmed from inadequate discovery, about 11 per cent were based on missed deadlines, con- flicts of interest accounted for nine per cent, and about eight per cent arose due to clerical errors. Dan Pinnington, LAWPRO's director of risk management, says the numbers in each respec- tive category are just slightly higher than those for all Ontario lawyers and in some instances, such as the clerical errors, stem from how senior lawyers run their practices. "I think the other thing that happens with the part-time crowd is they end up doing the work themselves instead of support staff especially if they're working from home," says Pinnington. "Regardless of how long you've practiced with or without a break, you need to be techni- cally proficient in whatever area of law you are working in," he says. "Clearly the fact that the communications-related errors are proportionately higher, they can't fall down on the level of client service and keeping up on what the client needs in terms of the work that they're doing." LT FederationLaw_LT_Nov24_08.indd 1 www.lawtimesnews.com 11/18/08 3:59:37 PM

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