At the end of 2023, Minden Gross LLP—a 73-year-old law firm with 35 partners, 20 associates and a coveted client roster—caught the legal community by surprise when it published a terse notice on its website. Citing the “challenges facing mid-size law firms in Canada” and an “unsuccessful” attempt to strengthen the firm through a merger, Minden Gross declared that it had no choice but to “implement a wind-down plan over the next few months.” The collapse cut sharply against Bay Street’s public image. By prizing tradition and projecting confidence, the most well-established law firms take on an aura of invincibility.
Yet when Michael Slan, the managing partner at Fogler, Rubinoff LLP, heard about the Minden Gross implosion, he didn’t find the news all that shocking. In his 46-year legal career, Slan has come to realize that law firms enjoy no special immunity from failure. Over the past two decades, he’s witnessed the high-profile dissolutions of Goodman and Carr LLP and Heenan Blaikie LLP. He’s also lived through a law-firm breakup himself: in 1990, when Lyons Goodman fell apart, he was a partner at the 40-lawyer Toronto firm. In other words, Slan has been around long enough to appreciate a simple fact: “Law firms can be fragile,” he says.
In the days after the Minden Gross announcement, the firm’s 55 lawyers promptly hit the job market. By February, the vast majority had found a new professional home. This development, too, struck Slan as unremarkable: when a prominent firm implodes, the competition will naturally scoop up the suddenly available talent. “There is always a demand for excellent lawyers,” he says. “It’s always competitive.” The aftermath of the collapse, in his view, was largely predictable.
Still, the reshuffling of so much talent has had a concrete impact on the Toronto legal market. Two law firms, in particular, took on a significant number of the Minden Gross castaways. At Foglers, whose lawyer headcount hovers around 120, Slan negotiated the acquisition of three partners and three associates. The Toronto office of Dickinson Wright LLP, meanwhile, welcomed six partners and four associates, raising the size of its legal team to about 70. Broadly speaking, both firms seized on the opportunity to land top talent. Now that we’re well past the half-year mark of the collapse, it’s an ideal moment to ask: how has the effort to absorb those lawyers gone so far?