Best place to start a civil litigation career?

[Juicy]

Where would you recommend someone who is interested in civil litigation to start their career? The options I have in mind are working for the MAG, a big law litigation department, a litigation boutique, but open to others as well.

Looking for a place that provides the best training and opportunities for fresh associates be involved in interesting/complex cases. Others factors could include work life balance, opportunities later in ones career, work culture, difficulty of getting a position, etc.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Juicy

[BlockedQuebecois]

This is actually quite a good question, so please don't take my answer as suggesting it's not one worth asking or one worth considering. In truth, though, I think there are real tradeoffs between each, and so long as you end up somewhere doing good work, you are likely to have the opportunity to develop your career. 

The main difference for a young litigator between those options will be that in government or at a boutique, you are more likely to be on your feet immediately and therefore more likely to be developing your oral advocacy skills quickly. That comes with a few tradeoffs to consider, though: 

• First, the cases you handle early on in your career at most boutiques will tend to be less complicated and high-value than those worked on by junior lawyers at big firms. In cases where juniors at boutiques are working on complicated, high-value cases, they're likely to be doing the same type of work as juniors at big shops.
   
• Following on from that point, some of the work done at big law firms is pretty unique to big law firms. If you want to make your money working on high-value files for blue-chip clients, most of that work will be handled by big law firms. Similarly, the vast majority of high-end class action defence work is done at big firms. This is a double-edged sword, of course, because it means some work (plaintiff side class action for example) is usually practiced out of boutiques.
   
• Third, generally speaking, you're going to have less support early on in your career. The big firms have more resources, which means you're likely to have 24/7 secretarial support (or close to it), the newest technology in your field, the assistance of the firm's librarians available to help with complex legal questions, and you're rarely going to have to worry about whether a case-related expense is justifiable (e.g. purchasing a case from another jurisdiction). Attending a conference or CPD you are interested in attending will never be a problem. Boutiques often provide less of this type of support and are more cost-conscious—this goes doubly for government jobs. 

All of the other things tend to come out in the wash. Some boutiques and MAG offices have absolutely atrocious work-life balance, as do some big law shops. Exit opportunities from similarly situated firms are the same. Work culture will entirely depend on the firm or MAG office, etc. 

The only other thing I would add is that unless you're doing something principally practiced by the government (i.e. Aboriginal law) or constitutional law (at MAG Constitutional), I don't really see the value proposition for complex commercial litigators in government. You could likely find a firm willing to give you a similar amount of time on your feet, and they would pay you more and support you better. And from reputation MAG tends to work their civil litigators hard, so it's not like the work life balance is improved. With that said, I'm sure it has its benefits, as many people want to work there each year. 

[MagnaCarter]

Another thing to consider is what types of files you want to litigate and what types of legal issues excite you. Complex cases can be found anywhere in any practice area, and really the complexity of file becomes annoying if it does not involve a subject matter that interests you.

Not all large firm litigation departments are equal. Some firms have a great litigation department, others tend to excel in certain niche areas only, and others are kind of mediocre. Although the litigation departments of big law firms often deal with lawsuits with the largest monetary amounts at stake, there are a number of litigation boutiques that will get similar files, and, although a junior will likely play a small role on these files, the junior at the litigation boutique will likely get the benefit of more experience on their feet early on managing smaller files as well. The impression I get is that boutiques also value their associates a bit more and see them as investments, whereas big law firms operate a bit like a pyramid with the expectation that x amount will burn out and leave only to be replaced. This might lead to better mentorship.

The MAG has excellent lawyers and is a very coveted spot to be. It handles a wide variety of cases with a wide variety of dollar amounts or implications on government at stake. I've never worked there but recruitment is very competitive.

In terms of work/life balance and culture, you may want to speak to a recruiter or reach out to anyone you know at these firms to find out specifics.

[PulpFiction]

Several months in at a boutique civ lit firm (think 5-7 lawyers, 3-5 staff, one practice area), and my experience has been great so far. At my shop, new lawyers are thrown in the deep end and handed carriage of complex files from day 1. They don't expect you to know how to do everything on your own immediately, so a lot of support is provided, so long as you ask for help. 

I'm sure a lot of boutiques/smaller shops don't have the luxury of only assigning less complex files to juniors, as sometimes there's work that needs to be done and the junior is the only one not drowning. This is how our firm is. This could be a blessing or a curse, depending on your experience and comfort dealing with tougher files. With the right support and resources, I think this experience is great and really pushes and challenges you as a new lawyer. Keep in mind, I'm not afraid to ask for help, and I do so when needed (after making reasonable attempts and being able demonstrate my efforts, of course). Some newer lawyers don't feel comfortable asking for help, and in that case, they would get washed out at my firm. 

I've been a lawyer for like a year, and almost every file I'm running right now is against a partner at the biggest firms in the city - Stikeman, BLG, Dentons, Blakes, Fasken and more. I don't even talk to juniors at these firms - definitely not what I was expecting when I joined. I'm guessing the partners delegate work to the juniors, but all my emails, phone calls, negotiations, mediations, are done directly with partners. Since the Defendants in most my files are established companies, they hire big firms to represent them, and because of that, I get to go up against lawyers way out of my league very early on. I love it - it gives me a chance to get my name out there and show them I can hang with them even with the significant gap in experience. 

The other day I was attending a mediation, where it was just me and my client on one side, and a biglaw partner and his client on the other side. We're talking a 12 or so year difference in year of call between me and the other lawyer. We settled a case that looked like it had no shot of settling when we first entered the room. A lot of back and forth to resolve it, but we both left wearing smiles and a new connection was made. This kind of opportunity to get hands on in the trenches and interact with other lawyers on serious files will probably not be available at bigger firms until many years into one's career.  

There's some good opportunities at these smaller shops, but like others have said, they're not all built the same. 

[Zarathustra]

Honestly any busy litigation practice will be fine.

[easttowest]

I love practicing in a large firm. That said, I was pretty fortunate to fall ass backwards into a group that is similar in size to a lot of boutiques, something I never considered through the interview process. The majority of our files are handled by no more than a partner and an associate and I have carriage of a number of files on my own a few months into practice. 

 

[Juicy]

On 3/17/2022 at 4:48 PM, PulpFiction said:

I've been a lawyer for like a year, and almost every file I'm running right now is against a partner at the biggest firms in the city - Stikeman, BLG, Dentons, Blakes, Fasken and more. I don't even talk to juniors at these firms - definitely not what I was expecting when I joined. I'm guessing the partners delegate work to the juniors, but all my emails, phone calls, negotiations, mediations, are done directly with partners. Since the Defendants in most my files are established companies, they hire big firms to represent them, and because of that, I get to go up against lawyers way out of my league very early on. I love it - it gives me a chance to get my name out there and show them I can hang with them even with the significant gap in experience.

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. Cool to hear about what you are doing!

Is it hard to find an articling position at a boutique litigation firm? What kind of person do they tend to hire (personality/law school activities like mooting or clinics/law school/prior work experience)? Do they target a different group of people compared to big firm litigation departments?

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Juicy

[Ramesses]

I wanted to a be a litigator for a long time so I spoke to a lot of lawyers and mentor about the practice area. In addition, to the legal experience mentioned by everyone above, there is also business experience to consider. One of my mentors whos a litigator at one of the top national firms told me that while boutiques and the government gives a lot of great expereince early on, it comes at the detriment of business development skills and how to operate in a business environment. Specifically, how to address the needs and concerns of demanding clients, how to get more business, and how to write business memos. 

[Juicy]

On 3/17/2022 at 3:40 PM, MagnaCarter said:

Not all large firm litigation departments are equal. Some firms have a great litigation department, others tend to excel in certain niche areas only, and others are kind of mediocre.

Thanks for the advice!

Not sure if this is public knowledge that can be shared. Which large firms in Canada are known to have great litigation departments doing interesting work?

Edited March 22, 2022 by Juicy

[Rashabon]

8 minutes ago, Juicy said:

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. Cool to hear about what you are doing!

Is it hard to find an articling position at a boutique litigation firm? What kind of person do they tend to hire (personality/law school experiences/law school/prior work experience)? Do they target a different group of people compared to big firm litigation departments?

 

Depends what you mean. Lenczners and Stockwoods and LOLG are all boutique litigation firms that have the same or higher standards than big firm litigation departments. A small firm might be a "boutique" in name but not what someone thinks of when they use that term.

 

[PulpFiction]

14 minutes ago, Juicy said:

Thanks for sharing your personal experience. Cool to hear about what you are doing!

Is it hard to find an articling position at a boutique litigation firm? What kind of person do they tend to hire (personality/law school experiences/law school/prior work experience)? Do they target a different group of people compared to big firm litigation departments?

 

I didn't find it all that difficult and I'm nothing special, I assure you. Your experience finding a position will vary depending on your work experience, skills, fit with the firm - it really depends. It's not like all litigation boutiques are the same. I'd say experience and comfort in court, desire to be an advocate, and client management skills are some of the best skills to be able to demonstrate to potential employers. 

What type of person do they tend to hire? It will depend. There's no concrete answer to this question. Just looking at my firm, everyone has a unique personality and no one fits a specific mold. We all come from different legal backgrounds and training, too. I'd say the type of person they hire is the one they believe can get the job done - experience in court (clinic or otherwise), drafting, negotiating, client management, dealing with pressure. On the other hand, I have a friend who was a deans lister in law school who moved to a well-known litigation shop with little to no court experience. I'm guessing they're betting on his intelligence in that case. It's not black and white. 

I've seen big firm litigators go to boutiques, and I'm sure it happens the other way, too. I'm guessing people go to boutiques to get hands on early and get interesting files they can contribute to in a meaningful way.  I can't tell you what they're thinking or if they're targeting anyone - just apply if you want the job and see what happens. 

Get the most hands-on experience you can while in school, take relevant courses, then shoot out some applications. 

Edited March 22, 2022 by PulpFiction

[hiccups]

On 3/22/2022 at 12:02 PM, Ramesses said:

 boutiques and the government gives a lot of great expereince early on, it comes at the detriment of business development skills and how to operate in a business environment. 

Can you elaborate?  Or if anyone else also observed this can you share your thoughts too?

[Cool_name]

20 minutes ago, hiccups said:

Can you elaborate?  Or if anyone else also observed this can you share your thoughts too?

The mentor he is quoting is biased. 
 

I agree you will develop different business development connections (I choose different as I think better or worse is more subjective), but I do not think you lose out on business development skills.

[BlockedQuebecois]

I'm going to be generous and assume when @Cool_name says there is no difference, they are saying there is no difference between top end boutiques and big law firms, and they have just ignored the government aspect of the question. It strikes me as obvious that government lawyers gain business development skills more slowly as a result of them having literally only one client who has to give them work. In fact, a significant part of the pitch for government work is that you don't need to do business development. 

I don't know enough about BD practices at top end boutiques to comment with any authority, but I would expect it to be relatively similar to bay street firms. Any difference between firms is more likely to be due to culture than the boutique/full service divide. 

[QMT20]

On 3/22/2022 at 3:03 PM, Juicy said:

Thanks for the advice!

Not sure if this is public knowledge that can be shared. Which large firms in Canada are known to have great litigation departments doing interesting work?

McCarthy's is traditionally known for having a strong litigation practice. It's probably the largest litigation department by head-count on Bay and does a broad variety of litigation work. A lot of the top boutiques like Lenczner, Polley Faith and Conway Baxter (Ottawa) were formed by partners who broke off from McCarthy's and some of the top partners at other boutiques like LOLG also spent most of their careers at McCarthy's. 

I'm not sure if Tory's is traditionally known for their litigation practice, but I've seen them on some interesting SCC appeals in the last couple of years and they have a few really well known senior partners. 

A few other full service firms are also really strong at specific types of litigation. Goodmans is really strong for IP litigation and has a lot of the top practitioners in that area. Fasken is known for L&E which involves a lot of litigation but can also be viewed as it's own type of practice. 

I'll let others comment on other firms that they know more about, but those are a couple of full service litigation departments that I think do interesting work. 

[hiccups]

14 hours ago, QMT20 said:

McCarthy's is traditionally known for having a strong litigation practice. It's probably the largest litigation department by head-count on Bay and does a broad variety of litigation work. A lot of the top boutiques like Lenczner, Polley Faith and Conway Baxter (Ottawa) were formed by partners who broke off from McCarthy's and some of the top partners at other boutiques like LOLG also spent most of their careers at McCarthy's. 

I'm not sure if Tory's is traditionally known for their litigation practice, but I've seen them on some interesting SCC appeals in the last couple of years and they have a few really well known senior partners. 

A few other full service firms are also really strong at specific types of litigation. Goodmans is really strong for IP litigation and has a lot of the top practitioners in that area. Fasken is known for L&E which involves a lot of litigation but can also be viewed as it's own type of practice. 

I'll let others comment on other firms that they know more about, but those are a couple of full service litigation departments that I think do interesting work. 

Does anyone know if the same reputations carry over to Vancouver?

[BlockedQuebecois]

20 hours ago, hiccups said:

Does anyone know if the same reputations carry over to Vancouver?

No, it doesn't. Most people would say Fasken has the strongest large firm group in Vancouver, and you'll have the strong regional firms (Farris, Lawson Lundell) up with most of the national ones. Then obviously the boutiques will be completely different, as well. 

[Juicy]

On 3/22/2022 at 3:07 PM, PulpFiction said:

Get the most hands-on experience you can while in school, take relevant courses, then shoot out some applications. 

Thanks for the advice! What courses would you recommend someone who is interested in civil litigation take?

To what extent should I be taking business related courses like business organizations, tax, and trusts. 

I heard some civil litigators at boutiques dabble in administrative and criminal cases. I am assuming that is really rare, but would be cool. Should I take administrative and criminal law courses out of interest? Or would firms see that as someone who has do idea what they want to do?

 

[hiccups]

13 minutes ago, Juicy said:

 

I heard some civil litigators at boutiques dabble in administrative and criminal cases. I am assuming that is really rare, but would be cool. Should I take administrative and criminal law courses out of interest? Or would firms see that as someone who has do idea what they want to do?

 

I didn't find admin and crim that rare in lit. Regulatory litigation work would require a good understanding of admin and crim.

[easttowest]

You should take admin anyway since it’s unbelievable how much lawyers can interact with the administrative state generally (as compared to, say, constitutional law which gets lots of play in law school). 

[hiccups]

Courses I found useful/would've found useful and regret not taking:  secured transaction/property/admin/evidence/civil procedure/contracts/torts/admin/business associations/insurance

Courses I didn't find as useful in my lit practice:  indigenous law/advanced legal research/sentencing/IP law/ tax law / corporate tax/ international law/ international trade law / non-profit law / constitution /  labour / employment / class action / diversity and the law / health law / arbitrtation

Can't remember the exact names for each course but those are what I can think of, off the top of my head. It also depends on your firm and what type of matters you get assigned on.

[MMMrhmm]

On 3/22/2022 at 9:16 AM, easttowest said:

I love practicing in a large firm. That said, I was pretty fortunate to fall ass backwards into a group that is similar in size to a lot of boutiques, something I never considered through the interview process. The majority of our files are handled by no more than a partner and an associate and I have carriage of a number of files on my own a few months into practice. 

 

If you don't mind me asking, what are certain large national firms that have this structure?

[Juicy]

2 hours ago, hiccups said:

Courses I found useful/would've found useful and regret not taking:  secured transaction/property/admin/evidence/civil procedure/contracts/torts/admin/business associations/insurance

Courses I didn't find as useful in my lit practice:  indigenous law/advanced legal research/sentencing/IP law/ tax law / corporate tax/ international law/ international trade law / non-profit law / constitution /  labour / employment / class action / diversity and the law / health law / arbitrtation

Can't remember the exact names for each course but those are what I can think of, off the top of my head. It also depends on your firm and what type of matters you get assigned on.

Very helpful! Thank you!

[MOL]

Re: Business Development

• You do have to do some in government, it's just that you a captive client and it's more in the nature of keeping the client happy. It's a bit more of a mix in-house but still weighted towards keeping client happy, think justifying continuing existence of your role and being seen to add value as well as career survival eg when the cuts come
• In private practice, learning business development is critical regardless of size of firm. I don't think the learning opportunities are any better, and frankly maybe a bit worse, at large factory firms. It's more about watching and learning from those who are really good at it and that cuts right across firm sizes, i.e. your big firm mentor is incorrect in my opinion
• Learning how to impress clients, regardless of whether they are captive government, in house or private firm, is critical to your survival and success as a lawyer. You want to try and learn how to do it as soon as you can. One of the best ways is to simply do a really good job on everything you do. I have seen countless lawyers get offered opportunities because they impressed a client, the lawyer in charge of the file or opposing counsel. 

Re: Best experience

• smaller shops and government, maybe some in-house, will give you more hands on experience earlier on in your career
• any size shop will have good lawyers and bad lawyers, try to figure out who's who early on and attach yourself to the good ones. Then watch, listen and learn. Think about what the goods one did and why it was good. Ask questions, don't be afraid to look like you don't know it all, none of us do and I am likely longer at the bar than most of you have been alive
• getting more experience early on is good, but being thrown into the deep end to sink or swim is not. You can learn from it but you can also learn some shitty habits or the wrong way to do things. Research wherever you are looking to join and make sure they have a decent rep for mentoring. On the whole, this profession does not excel at teaching

Re: Best courses at law school for a litigation career

• ones taught by practitioners on the whole are better than those taught by full time profs, not exclusively however and likely more applicable to upper year courses
• specific courses; I'm not sure what is and what isn't mandatory these days but this is my basic list; crim, property, contracts, evidence, civ pro, bus. associations, baby tax, trial ad if taught by someone decent, ADR ditto
• I don't know about admin, the whole standard of review thing seems to change from year to year depending on who's on the Supremes, I tend to sum it up as "what is fair, everyone gets a chance to say something, don't screw someone over without due process and make sure the decision is readable, based on facts/law/evidence and is one of the acceptable options"

My main practice is insurance defence. You'll get a lot of experience early on. But it's primarily a discovery/negotiated settlement practice. You won't get into Court, except maybe for applications, all that often. It can be interesting, particularly as you gain more experience and get files that aren't just car crash. 

[MagnaCarter]

On 4/16/2022 at 2:59 PM, MOL said:

...

• getting more experience early on is good, but being thrown into the deep end to sink or swim is not. You can learn from it but you can also learn some shitty habits or the wrong way to do things. Research wherever you are looking to join and make sure they have a decent rep for mentoring. On the whole, this profession does not excel at teaching

...

My main practice is insurance defence. You'll get a lot of experience early on. But it's primarily a discovery/negotiated settlement practice. You won't get into Court, except maybe for applications, all that often. It can be interesting, particularly as you gain more experience and get files that aren't just car crash. 

This 100%. The independence to experience ratio is both a pro and con of insurance defence. You get can get a scary amount of autonomy early on assuming carriage of files, running your own discoveries and mediations, and bringing motions independently as required, with next to no supervision. Court time is above average if your practice is broader than MVA tort, and its certainly not unusual to have files where all the other counsel are +10-20 years out. Friends who have lateraled to commercial litigation or non ID based civil litigation initially found it a bit frustrating to lose some of their independence and adopt more traditional junior associate roles, but not one of them has moved back. Having been practicing for a few years, I often think about whether I've developed all sorts of bad habits or stunted skills because I'm more or less on my own (except where I specifically seek out advice from colleagues). Mentorship is incredibly valuable and its definitely worth reaching out to associates, networking, or seeing what lawyers routinely present on topics that interest you to try and get a sense of what level of priority is placed on mentoring.